Is there a simple math solution to sample a disk area light? (Raytracing) - rendering

I'm trying to implement different types of lights in my ray-tracer coded in C. I have successfully implemented spot, point, directional and rectangular area lights.
For rectangular area light I define two vectors (U and V) in space and I use them to move into the virtual (delimited) rectangle they form.
Depending on the intensity of the light I take several samples on the rectangle then I calculate the amount of the light reaching a point as though each sample were a single spot light.
With rectangles it is very easy to find the position of the various samples, but things get complicated when I try to do the same with a disk light.
I found little documentation about that and most of them already use ready-made functions to do so.
The only interesting thing I found is this document (https://graphics.pixar.com/library/DiskLightSampling/paper.pdf) but I'm unable to exploit it.
Would you know how to help me achieve a similar result (of the following image) with vector operations? (ex. Having the origin, orientation, radius of the disk and the number of samples)
Any advice or documentation in this regard would help me a lot.

This question reduces to:
How can I pick a uniformly-distributed random point on a disk?
A naive approach would be to generate random polar coordinates and transform them to cartesian coordinates:
Randomly generate an angle θ between 0 and 2π
Randomly generate a distance d between 0 and radius r of your disk
Transform to cartesian coordinates with x = r cos θ and y = r sin θ
This is incorrect because it causes the points to bunch up in the center; for example:
A correct, but inefficient, way to do this is via rejection sampling:
Uniformly generate random x and y, each over [0, 1]
If sqrt(x^2 + y^2) < 1, return the point
Goto 1
The correct way to do this is illustrated here:
Randomly generate an angle θ between 0 and 2π
Randomly generate a distance d between 0 and radius r of your disk
Transform to cartesian coordinates with x = sqrt(r) cos θ and y = sqrt(r) sin θ

Related

How to convert relative GPS coordinates to a "local custom" x, y, z coordinate?

Let's say I know two persons are standing at GPS location A and B. A is looking at B.
I would like to know B's (x, y, z) coordinates based on A, where the +y axis is the direction to B (since A is looking at B), +z is the vertically to the sky. (therefore +x is right-hand side of A)
I know how to convert a GPS coordinate to UTM, but in this case, a coordinate system rotation and translation seem needed. I am going to come up with a calculation, but before that, will there be some codes to look at?
I think this must be handled by many applications, but I could not find so far.
Convert booth points to 3D Cartesian
GPS suggest WGS84 so see How to convert a spherical velocity coordinates into cartesian
Construct transform matrix with your desired axises
see Understanding 4x4 homogenous transform matrices. So you need 3 perpendicular unit vectors. The Y is view direction so
Y = normalize(B-A);
one of the axises will be most likely up vector so you can use approximation
Z = normalize(A);
and as origin you can use point A directly. Now just exploit cross product to create X perpendicular to both and make also Y perpendicular to X and Z (so up stays up). For more info see Representing Points on a Circular Radar Math approach
Transfrom B to B' by that matrix
Again in the QA linked in #1 is how to do it. It is simple matrix/vector multiplication.

calculate the depth feature in kinect?

I am learning how kinect works. But I am new to this field. somebody please help me , to better understand the given formula
Fϴ(I,x)=DI(x+(u/DI(x))-DI(x+(v/DI(x)))
In the description it is given that where
dI (x) is the depth at pixel x in image I, and
parametersϴ = (u, v) describe offsets u and v.
The normalization of the offsets by 1/dI (x) ensures the features are depth invariant:at a given point on the body, a fixed world space offset will result whether the pixel is close or far from the camera.
I am still unable to understand the whole formula that what is the depth at pixel x, what are the offsets u,v , offsets u and v, normalization of offsets ,..please help!
For pixel X and offset(U,V) are all vectors instead of numbers.
For example X is (100,200).
U is (5,0) V is (0,10).
And the normalization of offsets means if the point is near to the camera the offset is smaller, as the depth value in the near region is bigger. In the picture you can see, theta1 is bigger than theta2.
In that case, it will be depth invariable.

Initial velocity vector for circular orbit

I'm trying to create a solar system simulation, and I'm having problems trying to figure out initial velocity vectors for random objects I've placed into the simulation.
Assume:
- I'm using Gaussian grav constant, so all my units are AU/Solar Masses/Day
- Using x,y,z for coordinates
- One star, which is fixed at 0,0,0. Quasi-random mass is determined for it
- I place a planet, at a random x,y,z coordinate, and its own quasi-random mass determined.
Before I start the nbody loop (using RK4), I would like the initial velocity of the planet to be such that it has a circular orbit around the star. Other placed planets will, of course, pull on it once the simulation starts, but I want to give it the chance to have a stable orbit...
So, in the end, I need to have an initial velocity vector (x,y,z) for the planet that means it would have a circular orbit around the star after 1 timestep.
Help? I've been beating my head against this for weeks and I don't believe I have any reasonable solution yet...
It is quite simple if you assume that the mass of the star M is much bigger than the total mass of all planets sum(m[i]). This simplifies the problem as it allows you to pin the star to the centre of the coordinate system. Also it is much easier to assume that the motion of all planets is coplanar, which further reduces the dimensionality of the problem to 2D.
First determine the magnitude of the circular orbit velocity given the magnitude of the radius vector r[i] (the radius of the orbit). It only depends on the mass of the star, because of the above mentioned assumption: v[i] = sqrt(mu / r[i]), where mu is the standard gravitational parameter of the star, mu = G * M.
Pick a random orbital phase parameter phi[i] by sampling uniformly from [0, 2*pi). Then the initial position of the planet in Cartesian coordinates is:x[i] = r[i] * cos(phi[i]) y[i] = r[i] * sin(phi[i])
With circular orbits the velocity vector is always perpendicular to the radial vector, i.e. its direction is phi[i] +/- pi/2 (+pi/2 for counter-clockwise (CCW) rotation and -pi/2 for clockwise rotation). Let's take CCW rotation as an example. The Cartesian coordinates of the planet's velocity are:vx[i] = v[i] * cos(phi[i] + pi/2) = -v[i] * sin(phi[i])vy[i] = v[i] * sin(phi[i] + pi/2) = v[i] * cos(phi[i])
This easily extends to coplanar 3D motion by adding z[i] = 0 and vz[i] = 0, but it makes no sense, since there are no forces in the Z direction and hence z[i] and vz[i] would forever stay equal to 0 (i.e. you will be solving for a 2D subspace problem of the full 3D space).
With full 3D simulation where each planet moves in a randomly inclined initial orbit, one can work that way:
This step is equal to step 1 from the 2D case.
You need to pick an initial position on the surface of the unit sphere. See here for examples on how to do that in a uniformly random fashion. Then scale the unit sphere coordinates by the magnitude of r[i].
In the 3D case, instead of two possible perpendicular vectors, there is a whole tangential plane where the planet velocity lies. The tangential plane has its normal vector collinear to the radius vector and dot(r[i], v[i]) = 0 = x[i]*vx[i] + y[i]*vy[i] + z[i]*vz[i]. One could pick any vector that is perpendicular to r[i], for example e1[i] = (-y[i], x[i], 0). This results in a null vector at the poles, so there one could pick e1[i] = (0, -z[i], y[i]) instead. Then another perpendicular vector can be found by taking the cross product of r[i] and e1[i]:e2[i] = r[i] x e1[i] = (r[2]*e1[3]-r[3]*e1[2], r[3]*e1[1]-r[1]*e1[3], r[1]*e1[2]-r[2]*e1[1]). Now e1[i] and e2[i] can be normalised by dividing them by their norms:n1[i] = e1[i] / ||e1[i]||n2[i] = e2[i] / ||e2[i]||where ||a|| = sqrt(dot(a, a)) = sqrt(a.x^2 + a.y^2 + a.z^2). Now that you have an orthogonal vector basis in the tangential plane, you can pick one random angle omega in [0, 2*pi) and compute the velocity vector as v[i] = cos(omega) * n1[i] + sin(omega) * n2[i], or as Cartesian components:vx[i] = cos(omega) * n1[i].x + sin(omega) * n2[i].xvy[i] = cos(omega) * n1[i].y + sin(omega) * n2[i].yvz[i] = cos(omega) * n1[i].z + sin(omega) * n2[i].z.
Note that by construction the basis in step 3 depends on the radius vector, but this does not matter since a random direction (omega) is added.
As to the choice of units, in simulation science we always tend to keep things in natural units, i.e. units where all computed quantities are dimensionless and kept in [0, 1] or at least within 1-2 orders of magnitude and so the full resolution of the limited floating-point representation could be used. If you take the star mass to be in units of Solar mass, distances to be in AUs and time to be in years, then for an Earth-like planet at 1 AU around a Sun-like star, the magnitude of the orbital velocity would be 2*pi (AU/yr) and the magnitude of the radius vector would be 1 (AU).
Just let centripetal acceleration equal gravitational acceleration.
m1v2 / r = G m1m2 / r2
v = sqrt( G m2 / r )
Of course the star mass m2 must be much greater than the planet mass m1 or you don't really have a one-body problem.
Units are a pain in the butt when setting up physics problems. I've spent days resolving errors in seconds vs timestep units. Your choice of AU/Solar Masses/Day is utterly insane. Fix that before anything else.
And, keep in mind that computers have inherently limited precision. An nbody simulation accumulates integration error, so after a million or a billion steps you will certainly not have a circle, regardless of the step duration. I don't know much about that math, but I think stable n-body systems keep themselves stable by resonances which absorb minor variations, whether introduced by nearby stars or by the FPU. So the setup might work fine for a stable, 5-body problem but still fail for a 1-body problem.
As Ed suggested, I would use the mks units, rather than some other set of units.
For the initial velocity, I would agree with part of what Ed said, but I would use the vector form of the centripetal acceleration:
m1v2/r r(hat) = G m1 m2 / r2 r(hat)
Set z to 0, and convert from polar coordinates to cartesian coordinates (x,y). Then, you can assign either y or x an initial velocity, and compute what the other variable is to satisfy the circular orbit criteria. This should give you an initial (Vx,Vy) that you can start your nbody problem from. There should also be quite a bit of literature out there on numerical recipes for nbody central force problems.

How to find the point of collision between an irregular shape (built out of 3 circles) and a line

I'm making a program in which many weird shapes are drawn onto a canvas. Right now i'm trying to implement the last, and possebly hardest, one.
In this particular shape i need a way to find the location (on a 2d canvas) where the line hits the shape. The following image is an example of what i have right now.
The black dots are the points that a known to me (i also have the location of the center of the three open circles and the radius of these circles). Each of the three outer lines needs a line towards the center dot, ending at the point that it hits the circle. This shape can be turned 90, 180 or 270 degrees.
The shape should look something like the following:
If you need any other information, please ask me in the comments. I'm not very good at math so please be gentle, thanks!
If A and B are points forming a line, then you can describe any point on that line using coordinates:
x = t·Ax + (1−t)·Bx
y = t·Ay + (1−t)·By
0 ≤ t ≤ 1
You can also describe the circle with center M and radius r as
(x − Mx)2 + (y − My)2 = r2
So take the x and y from the equations of the line, and plug them into the equation of the circle. You obtain a quadratic equation in t. Its two solutions describe the two points of intersection between the line and circle. In your example, only one of them lies on the line segment, i.e. satisfies 0 ≤ t ≤ 1. The other describes a point on the extension of the segment past its endpoint. Take the correct value for t back to the equations of the line, and you obtain the x and y coordinates of the point of intersection.
If you don't know up front which circle you want to intersect with a given line, then intersect all three and choose the most appropriate point afterwards. Probably that is the point closest to the outside starting point of the line segment. The same goes in cases where both points of intersection lie on the segment.

Most efficient way to check if a point is in or on a convex quad polygon

I'm trying to figure out the most efficient/fast way to add a large number of convex quads (four given x,y points) into an array/list and then to check against those quads if a point is within or on the border of those quads.
I originally tried using ray casting but thought that it was a little overkill since I know that all my polygons will be quads and that they are also all convex.
currently, I am splitting each quad into two triangles that share an edge and then checking if the point is on or in each of those two triangles using their areas.
for example
Triangle ABC and test point P.
if (areaPAB + areaPAC + areaPBC == areaABC) { return true; }
This seems like it may run a little slow since I need to calculate the area of 4 different triangles to run the check and if the first triangle of the quad returns false, I have to get 4 more areas. (I include a bit of an epsilon in the check to make up for floating point errors)
I'm hoping that there is an even faster way that might involve a single check of a point against a quad rather than splitting it into two triangles.
I've attempted to reduce the number of checks by putting the polygon's into an array[,]. When adding a polygon, it checks the minimum and maximum x and y values and then using those, places the same poly into the proper array positions. When checking a point against the available polygons, it retrieves the proper list from the array of lists.
I've been searching through similar questions and I think what I'm using now may be the fastest way to figure out if a point is in a triangle, but I'm hoping that there's a better method to test against a quad that is always convex. Every polygon test I've looked up seems to be testing against a polygon that has many sides or is an irregular shape.
Thanks for taking the time to read my long winded question to what's prolly a simple problem.
I believe that fastest methods are:
1: Find mutual orientation of all vector pairs (DirectedEdge-CheckedPoint) through cross product signs. If all four signs are the same, then point is inside
Addition: for every edge
EV[i] = V[i+1] - V[i], where V[] - vertices in order
PV[i] = P - V[i]
Cross[i] = CrossProduct(EV[i], PV[i]) = EV[i].X * PV[i].Y - EV[i].Y * PV[i].X
Cross[i] value is positive, if point P lies in left semi-plane relatively to i-th edge (V[i] - V[i+1]), and negative otherwise. If all the Cross[] values are positive, then point p is inside the quad, vertices are in counter-clockwise order. f all the Cross[] values are negative, then point p is inside the quad, vertices are in clockwise order. If values have different signs, then point is outside the quad.
If quad set is the same for many point queries, then dmuir suggests to precalculate uniform line equation for every edge. Uniform line equation is a * x + b * y + c = 0. (a, b) is normal vector to edge. This equation has important property: sign of expression
(a * P.x + b * Y + c) determines semi-plane, where point P lies (as for crossproducts)
2: Split quad to 2 triangles and use vector method for each: express CheckedPoint vector in terms of basis vectors.
P = a*V1+b*V2
point is inside when a,b>=0 and their sum <=1
Both methods require about 10-15 additions, 6-10 multiplications and 2-7 comparisons (I don't consider floating point error compensation)
If you could afford to store, with each quad, the equation of each of its edges then you could save a little time over MBo's answer.
For example if you have an inward pointing normal vector N for each edge of the quad, and a constant d (which is N.p for one of the vertcies p on the edge) then a point x is in the quad if and only if N.x >= d for each edge. So thats 2 multiplications, one addition and one comparison per edge, and you'll need to perform up to 4 tests per point.This technique works for any convex polygon.