Hello ,

I am going to do research in the field of global illumination for games , but before going deep into this enormous field , what do you think the skills ( math , courses and others skills ) needed for such research .for example , I finished calculus , linear algebra , statistics , numerical methods . is it enough for doing such resear h in the field of global illumination for games .

I have general concepts of computer graphics , game development ( shaders ..... etc ) .

what is your recommended research field these days ( the most wanted ! ) ?

- shadows .
- global illumination for games.
- others ( say pls if you have any !).

thanks.

Do you have institutional access to online journal resources like ACM, IEEE, Wiley etc? The reason I ask is that the general web isn't really too hot for learning this stuff so the best approach (IMO) is to go straight to the horse's mouth and read the academic papers. But! They are often behind a paywall (hence the institutional access). There are ways around this (try and find a copy of the paper on the author's website, emailing the author, etc.) but this is much more long winded than having access to the journal repositories.

My approach to research is to find a paper that is either seminal or an offshoot off of a seminal piece and track down the references, both forwards (papers that cite that work) and backwards (papers cited by that work). Before long you will have a web of papers covering most of the pertinent works.

That's not to say there aren't any fantastic resources online (there are!) but I would not use them as my primary research vessel as they are far and in between in my experience. Places like this website are great for asking questions to clarify key points but (again, IMO) this is an inefficient means of learning about a topic if your research is intended to be broad and comprehensive.

@GeneralQuery , thanks , your approach is good , but my question still not answered , topics such as global illumination for games need math skills and they hard to figure out by looking at researches.

there is many topics in the field of computer graphics for games , I am interested in shading and lighting in general ( 3D games not for 2D ) , so what is the most recommended field to do research in and the skills required for such research ( math , time ....etc ) :
1 : interactive visualization
2 : photo-realistic image synthesis. ( global illumination ).

Oh right, yes, your experience sounds more than adequate to your needs. Calculus is a must for a lot of GI work in my experience but it seems as if you have this base covered. Your best bet would be to check out the Rendering Equation and see if you can make heads nor tails out of it. If not, then I would say you will have your work cut out for you as it will come up in various shapes and forms throughout your research. There's lots of reources online to explain this aspect to you but if you are lacking in the mathematical department then I would advise you brush up on this first. That's not to say you can't research GI without such skills but it will be a handicap for you.

Some topics to get you started:

* Global Illumination (obviously!), very broad topic encompassing many techniques
* Radiosity
* Virtual Point Lights
* Spherical Harmonics
* Environment Mapping (this resource is great, check out the whole blog, lots of good info here)

GI is not my field but I did tentatively survey some of the literature a few years back so hopefully this will give you some ideas and maybe some more knowledgeable users can fill in the gaps for you.

@GeneralQuery , thanks so much .