• ambient occlusion
• CG
• computer graphics
• global illumination
• irradiance
• local illumination
• molecular graphics
• pointsplatting
• QML
• Qt
• scientific visualization
• UI

We present a novel GPU based rendering algorithm, specifically designed for visualizing very large molecular models with global illumination. Our algorithm is based on screen splats representing an entire spheres (as opposed to a small portions of a surface, as in typical point splatting algorithms).
The key is the exploitation of the very limited screen space size (a few pixels) of the sphere elements at the required scales.
Global illumination is quickly precomputed as an irradiance function defined over the surface of each sphere, and efficiently stored though spherical harmonics.