Voxel Based Global Illumination Dev Log 1 - Proof of concept

This project is born to a fill void, that I have no way to efficently and accurately render realtime dynamic indirect diffuse lighting in my other engines. The idea is pretty simple... first apply direct light to a voxelized representation of the scene, then use that light to propogate light through a grid, then sample that grid when rendering each fragment.

I wrote this over the last week and all voxelation, visibility tests, and lighting is calculated on the cpu. For visiblity I'm currently raycasting against a triangle representation of the voxel world which is horribly slow. The next step is switch to faster algorithms for visiblity and light propogation and ultimately to see if this idea can feasibly be used to render GI in my other projects.

It's written in OpenGL/c++. Will port to Vulkan if I can achieve the visuals I want. For now it's quicker to work in GL.

[AR-ymzh]

I heard Guah by Commodo 😉.

Love following your project.

[oakmars]

Just gotta say this is awesome. I'm just curious about how one can learn how to program the effects you use here ?

[kachmarek]

was that a commodo tune i heard in there?

[Conlexio]

is there a reason you went with meshing instead of raytracing an octree? the complex lighting calculations would be cheaper if everything is gonna stay grid aligned