The universal projection for computing data carried on the hemisphere

For many years, important efforts have been devoted to efficiently compute the view factors in the frame of radiative heat exchanges. This subject has also received special attention in the more recent development of global illumination methods. Basically two techniques are available; the first one is based on projections and the second one on ray tracing methods. Here we will present a new algorithm dealing with projections and show that we can solve both the problems of computing view factors and solid angles by using the same projection. The proposed method is precise and fast, so it can be used in interactive design software. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.