13 Facts About Path tracing

Path tracing is a computer graphics Monte Carlo method of rendering images of three-dimensional scenes such that the global illumination is faithful to reality.

When combined with physically accurate models of surfaces, accurate models of real light sources, and optically correct cameras, path tracing can produce still images that are indistinguishable from photographs.

However, the path tracing algorithm is relatively inefficient: a very large number of rays must be traced to get high-quality images free of noise artifacts.

Path tracing was introduced then as an algorithm to find a numerical solution to the integral of the rendering equation.

In 1998, Blue Sky Studios rendered the Academy Award-winning short film Bunny with their proprietary CGI Studio path tracing renderer, featuring soft shadows and indirect illumination effects.

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Path tracing is confounded by optical phenomena not contained in the three principles.

The TracePath tracing function calculates a single sample of a pixel, where only the Gathering Path tracing is considered.

For Backwards Path Tracing, this creates high variance for caustic paths that interact with a diffuse surface, then bounce off a specular surface before hitting a light source.

Bidirectional Path Tracing provides an algorithm that combines the two approaches and can produce lower variance than either method alone.

The original Light Tracing and Backwards Path Tracing algorithms are both special cases of these strategies.

For Backwards Path Tracing, it is connecting the vertices of the light path to the first vertex of the camera path.

Weighting all of these sampling strategies using Multiple Importance Sampling creates a new sampler that can converge faster than Unidirectional Path Tracing, even though more work is required for each sample.

Central performance bottleneck in path tracing is the complex geometrical calculation of casting a ray.