Realistic, Real-Time Shading and Rendering of Objects with Complex Materials

A long sought goal in computer graphics is to create images as realistically as possible but at the same time as quickly as possible. Many problems have to be solved in order to achieve this goal. This dissertation focuses on solving one of the main problems in real-time image synthesis: realistic shading of objects with complex optical material properties. To this end, we develop a set of new techniques and algorithms using graphics hardware. These algorithms achieve results in real-time, which are of comparable quality to offline rendering and were previously considered impossible to achieve in real-time. In particular, we propose new algorithms for bump mapping and shadowing in bump maps, several techniques for glossy reflections using environment maps, self-shadowing and interreflections for environment mapped objects, as well as displacement mapping