Surfels are a type of geometry representation that encodes the shape of an object as a set of small, irregularly shaped primitives called “microfacets”. Each microfacet is a small triangle or quadrilateral that approximates the surface of the object at a particular point. By using many small microfacets, surfels can effectively model the complex shapes and details of real-world objects.
The key innovation of the surfel-based global illumination method presented by EA is that it uses surfels to represent objects in the scene, which allows for more efficient and accurate rendering of global illumination. The authors show that by using surfels, they can avoid some of the complexity and computational overhead of traditional global illumination techniques, while still producing accurate and visually pleasing results.
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Links
https://www.ea.com/seed/news/siggraph21-global-illumination-surfels
