Comparing 3D-Clipmaps and Sparse Voxel Octrees for voxelbased cone tracing

Abstract: Voxel based cone tracing is a promising approach to approximate globalillumination for real-time applications. This technique utilizes a voxelfield approximating the original scene to retrieve the necessary radi-ance information during sampling. The simplest approach to creat-ing a voxel field is to use a 3D texture. Since this requires too muchGPU memory for larger scenes alternative data structures are neces-sary. This thesis compares two seemingly suitable data structures 3D-Clipmaps and Sparse voxel octrees. To compare the two structures weimplement them using OpenGL and C++. We then use the improvedSponza model with additional dynamic objects to benchmark the dif-ferences between the two approaches. Both data structures has its prosand cons. Our conclusion is that Clipmaps seems to be the most prac-tical approach for real-world purposes.