Ambient Light Caching via Approximate Photon Mapping

Indirect illumination is an essential part of realistic computer-generated imagery. However, accurate calculation of indirect illumination comes at high compute costs. To this end, we replace lengthy indirect illumination paths by employing an ambient light cache based on photon mapping principles. By only performing cache queries after a...

Efficient direct lighting calculations for area lights with light portals

Direct lighting calculation is an essential part of photorealistic rendering. Standard importance sampling techniques converge slowly in scenes where a light source is only visible through small openings as visibility is not considered. This problem is often addressed by manually placing light portals, marking the openings to the light. However,...