Real-Time 3D Visualization of Accurate Specular Reflections in Curved Mirrors – A GPU Implementation

This paper presents a vertex-based solution for rendering real-time accurate reflections in quadric mirrors in dynamic scenes using CUDA and OpenGL. Our method, based on forward projection, exploits the global information of the vertices and textures as they are computed from its original positions, to their reflections points in the mirror, and finally, to the eye. This solution does not suffer from parallax or visibility issues, neither does it needs to deal with ray intersection. As viewers navigate through the scene, the reflection points are instantly recalculated, depending on the position of the camera. Thus, given a 3D scene, this method gathers all vertex, light, and texture information and computes them at every instance, finding the reflection points and rendering the reflections on the mirror surface. We also demonstrate the accuracy and performance of our method by rendering two sample scenes.