Exploring a New Approach to Realistic Lighting: Radiance Cascades

Radiance Cascades are an innovative solution to global illumination from the devs of Path of Exile 2. Let's explore and implement their approach.

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In this video, we look through the recent Radiance Cascades paper from the devs of Path of Exile 2, explore the ideas behind their approach, and implement something similar.

Reference:

Other great explanations:

[simondev]

Some additional links from the video. Also, working discord link:

I never thought I'd see Radiance Cascades, let alone create one!

[AlexPechenka]

Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional!

[MaDmanEXE]

So this approach, but for audio, would be called a "resonance cascade"?

[Alexander_Sannikov]

I knew those PoE2 devs were up to something!

[radspiderjackson]

That one statement @ 2:08 is precisely why I love this channel. Although i cant deny how much i need the maths in my life

[rrrfrdd]

The Penumbra Condition sounds like a nice title for a game

[kevincrinklaw]

We're in this weird place where I don't want to work enough that I will sit through a college level dissertation on lighting simulation. LoL

Great Video!!!

[SuboptimalEng]

What’s next, Radiance Cascading Style Sheets?!

[DrunkGeko]

Ever since Exilecon i've been waiting for someone to do a nice video breakdown of Radiance Cascades. I can see it becoming a mainstream technique in the upcoming years, so much potential

[coreC..]

It all makes so much sense when you explain and show it to us.
Without your video, i would get lost in "paper" articles with just a few images. Scrolling through equations and getting familiar with new terms.
Thanks for another great video SimonDev. 👍

[Definitely_a_Fox]

Looking through the comments, and I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought the title said "Resonance Cascade"

[andreanderson]

I always know you're going to make me understand something new in the way that I need it to understand it. I think we speak the same exact language; like a mixture of nothing-is-new-just-another-rehashed-version-of-the-same-stuff-we-already-did, and Thank you. Every time. Thank you for speaking my language.

[theftking]

"Most of us are programmers, not math people." -> that's a great quote.

[mxcop]

Nice animations, and intuitive explanations, great video!
And thanks for consulting & mentioning the community at the end :D

[JA-inhw]

That was well explained. It made reading the paper on it so much simpler. Things are always easier with a clear picture and an overview to start. Thanks for putting out a concise explainer.

[Snowdrama]

So what it's sounding like is multiple resolutions of like real time light probes? You create a fixed grid of probes, and then occasionally precompute the incoming light from different directions for each point, and then when determining the light of any point, you interpolate the light between the points, for each "cascade" of light and then combine them together? At least that's what I'm gathering. This way for each point you're only computing the light from the nearest few cascade points not the whole scene

[Visuwyg]

This video went from super simple to utterly incomprehensible in a span of seconds! I'm having whiplash! 😂

[JeanOJesus]

This channel is a gold mine. Thank you.

[xDA]

this is such a well put-together explanation. you convey a difficult concept from ground 0 to implementation really smoothly and i understand more than i'd expect. hats off.