research-article

A comprehensive theory of volumetric radiance estimation using photon points and beams

Authors:

Wojciech Jarosz,

Derek Nowrouzezahrai,

Henrik Wann JensenAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 30, Issue 1

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/1899404.1899409

Published: 02 February 2011 Publication History

Abstract

We present two contributions to the area of volumetric rendering. We develop a novel, comprehensive theory of volumetric radiance estimation that leads to several new insights and includes all previously published estimates as special cases. This theory allows for estimating in-scattered radiance at a point, or accumulated radiance along a camera ray, with the standard photon particle representation used in previous work. Furthermore, we generalize these operations to include a more compact, and more expressive intermediate representation of lighting in participating media, which we call “photon beams.” The combination of these representations and their respective query operations results in a collection of nine distinct volumetric radiance estimates.

Our second contribution is a more efficient rendering method for participating media based on photon beams. Even when shooting and storing less photons and using less computation time, our method significantly reduces both bias (blur) and variance in volumetric radiance estimation. This enables us to render sharp lighting details (e.g., volume caustics) using just tens of thousands of photon beams, instead of the millions to billions of photon points required with previous methods.

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Bauer DWu QMa K(2024)Photon Field Networks for Dynamic Real-Time Volumetric Global IlluminationIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332710730:1(975-985)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
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Salesin KKnobelspiesse KChowdhary JZhai PJarosz W(2024)Unifying radiative transfer models in computer graphics and remote sensing, Part II: A differentiable, polarimetric forward model and validationJournal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer10.1016/j.jqsrt.2023.108849315(108849)Online publication date: Mar-2024
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Index Terms

A comprehensive theory of volumetric radiance estimation using photon points and beams
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Image manipulation
      1. Texturing
    2. Rendering
      1. Ray tracing
  2. Modeling and simulation
    1. Simulation types and techniques
2. Mathematics of computing
  1. Probability and statistics
    1. Probabilistic algorithms
    2. Probabilistic reasoning algorithms
      1. Markov-chain Monte Carlo methods
      2. Sequential Monte Carlo methods

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cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 30, Issue 1

January 2011

92 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/1899404

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 02 February 2011

Accepted: 01 November 2010

Revised: 01 July 2010

Received: 01 November 2009

Published in TOG Volume 30, Issue 1

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Cited By

Bauer DWu QMa K(2024)Photon Field Networks for Dynamic Real-Time Volumetric Global IlluminationIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332710730:1(975-985)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3327107
Salesin KKnobelspiesse KChowdhary JZhai PJarosz W(2024)Unifying radiative transfer models in computer graphics and remote sensing, Part II: A differentiable, polarimetric forward model and validationJournal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer10.1016/j.jqsrt.2023.108849315(108849)Online publication date: Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2023.108849
Kim JJarosz WGkioulekas IPediredla A(2023)Doppler Time-of-Flight RenderingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/361833542:6(1-18)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3618335
Moonen NJalba A(2023)Efficient Hardware Acceleration of Robust Volumetric Light Transport SimulationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1480242:6Online publication date: 27-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14802
Qi YSeyb DBitterli BJarosz W(2022)A bidirectional formulation for Walk on SpheresComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1458641:4(51-62)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14586
Liu YJiao SJarosz W(2022)Temporally sliced photon primitives for time‐of‐flight renderingComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1458441:4(29-40)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14584
Lin DWyman CYuksel C(2021)Fast volume rendering with spatiotemporal reservoir resamplingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3478513.348049940:6(1-18)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478513.3480499
Bitterli BWyman CPharr MShirley PLefohn AJarosz W(2020)Spatiotemporal reservoir resampling for real-time ray tracing with dynamic direct lightingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339248139:4(148:1-148:17)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392481
Wang BGe LHolzschuch N(2020)Precomputed Multiple Scattering for Rapid Light Simulation in Participating MediaIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2018.289046626:7(2456-2470)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
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Deng XJiao SBitterli BJarosz W(2019)Photon surfaces for robust, unbiased volumetric density estimationACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3306346.332304138:4(1-12)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2019
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