question about HDR luminance calculation

Graphics and GPU Programming Programming

Started by coderchris January 05, 2008 08:45 PM

3 comments, last by Sc4Freak 16 years, 3 months ago

308

Author

January 05, 2008 08:45 PM

Good evening, Im following the directx sdk HDR sample for doing some nice HDR tone mapping, and i notice that to calculate luminance, they calculate luminance first for a scaled down version of the scene, then average all of these luminance values together to get the average luminace for the scene The equation they use to calculate luminance for a single pixel is: lum = log(dot(colorValue, LUMINANCE_VECTOR) + 0.0001f) Im wondering if instead of doing luminance calculation then averaging, if I could instead average my color values first then do a single luminance calculation on that average color and still get a correct luminance for the scene?

deathkrush

350

January 05, 2008 10:24 PM

That's not going to work because log(a) + log(b) = log(a * b). And what about dot(a * b) * dot(a * c)?

deathkrushPS3/Xbox360 Graphics Programmer, Mass Media.Completed Projects: Stuntman Ignition (PS3), Saints Row 2 (PS3), Darksiders(PS3, 360)

coderchris

308

Author

January 05, 2008 10:57 PM

Ah that makes sense; oh well it was worth a shot :P

I was hoping for a quicker way to calculate luminance but i guess theres no way to really avoid that log

MJP

20,295

January 06, 2008 03:22 AM

Yup, you have to convert to luminance first before averaging. But the upside of that is that the surfaces you use for downsampling will be smaller, since they only need one or two channels.

Also if you're interested in seeing the math for luminance calculation and tone-mapping, it all comes from this paper.

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