Real-Time Subsurface Scattering using Shadow Maps
Real-Time Subsurface Scattering using Shadow Maps

Physically-based lighting provides a high level of realism in 3D games and VR systems. Subsurface scattering of light makes the appearance of the media translucent, soft, and smooth. In this article, we use shadow maps as a key solution for real-time subsurface scattering. By using shadow maps, we can we can avoid costly ray tracing and exploit the power of modern graphics hardware. Moreover, an adaptive deterministic sampling strategy dramatically reduces the number of samples. Finally, jittering in shadow map projection eliminates aliasing and simulates soft shadows at shadow boundaries. This technique, called subsurface-scatter mapping, fully runs on graphics hardware in real-time.

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Selected Publication:
Real-Time Subsurface Scattering using Shadow Maps Hyunwoo Ki. "Real-Time Subsurface Scattering using Shadow Maps". ShaderX7, pp. 467-478. 

BibTeX:
@inbook{KiH09SSM,
author = {Hyunwoo Ki},
title = {ShaderX7},
chapter = {Real-Time Subsurface Scattering using Shadow Maps}, 
pages = {467--478},
year = {2009}, }

Acknowledgement:
We would like to very thank to Carsten Dachsbacher for allowing me to use his refective shadow maps code in ShaderX4. The implementation of my subsurface scatter included in the CD is based on Dachsbarcher's Reflective Shadow Maps code in ShaderX4.


Related Publication:
Real-Time Approximate Subsurface Scattering on Graphics Hardware Hyunwoo Ki, Jihye Lyu, and Kyoungsu Oh. "Real-Time Approximate Subsurface Scattering on Graphics Hardware". The 15th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications (Pacific Graphics 2007), pp. 403-406. (abstract)
A GPU-Based Light Hierarchy for Real-Time Approximate Illumination Hyunwoo Ki, and Kyoungsu Oh. "A GPU-Based Light Hierarchy for Real-Time Approximate Illumination". The Visual Computer, Volume 24, Numbers 7-9, July, 2008, pp. 649-658.
Hierarchical Rendering Techniques for Real-Time Approximate Illumination on Programmable Graphics Hardware Hyunwoo Ki. "Hierarchical Rendering Techniques for Real-Time Approximate Illumination on Programmable Graphics Hardware". Master's Thesis, Soongsil University, June 2007. (Note this thesis is an extended version of the journal paper. It additionally introduces a hierarchical subsampling method to accelerate final rendering.)