The rendering equation

I. Exact vs approximate methods

II: Gathering vs shooting methods

III: Approximate methods: view-dependent vs view-independent solutions

GI methods supported by V-Ray

 

 

 

The rendering equation

Virtually all modern GI renderers are based on the rendering equation introduced by James T. Kajiya in his 1986 paper "The Rendering Equation". This equation describes how light is propagated throughout a scene. In his paper, Kajiya also proposed a method for computing an image based on the rendering equation using a Monte Carlo method called path tracing.

 

It should be noted that the equation has been known long before that in engineering and has been used for computing radiative heat transfer in different environments. However, Kajiya was the first to apply this equation to computer graphics.

 

It should also be noted that the rendering equation is only "an approximation of Maxwell's equation for electromagnetics". It does not attempt to model all optical phenomena. It is only based on geometric optics and therefore cannot simulate things like diffraction, interference or polarization. However, it can be easily modified to account for wavelength-dependent effects like dispersion.

 

Another, more philosophical point to make, is that the rendering equation is derived from a mathematical model of how light behaves. While it is a very good model for the purposes of computer graphics, it does not describe exactly how light behaves in the real world. For example, the rendering equation assumes that light rays are infinitesimally thin and that the speed of light is infinite - neither of these assumptions is true in the real physical world.

 

Because the rendering equation is based on geometric optics, raytracing is a very convenient way to solve the rendering equation. Indeed, most renderers that solve the rendering equation are based on raytracing.

 

Different formulations of the rendering equation are possible, but the one proposed by Kajiya looks like this:

where:

L(x, x1) is related to the light passing from point x1 to point x;

g(x, x1) is a geometry (or visibility term);

e(x, x1) is the intensity of emitted light from point x1 towards point x;

r(x, x1, x2) is related to the light scattered from point x2 to point x through point x1;

S is the union of all surfaces in the scene and x, x1 and x2 are points from S.

 

What the equation means: the light arriving at a given point x in the scene from another point x1 is the sum of the light emitted from all other points x2 towards x1 and reflected towards x:

 

 

Except for very simple cases, the rendering equation cannot be solved exactly in a finite amount of time on a computer. However, we can get as close as we want to the real solution - given enough time. The search for global illumination algorithms has been a quest for finding solutions that are reasonably close, for a reasonable amount of time.

 

The rendering equation is only one. Different renderers only apply different methods for solving it. If any two renderers solve this equation accurately enough, then they should generate the same image for the same scene. This is very well in theory, but in practice renderers often truncate or alter parts of the rendering equation, which may lead to different results.

 

I: Exact vs approximate methods

As noted above, we cannot solve the equation exactly - there is always some error, although it can be made very small. In some rendering methods, the desired error is specified in advance by the user and it determines the accuracy of the calculations (f.e. GI sample density, or GI rays, or number of photons etc.). A disadvantage of these methods is that the user must wait for the whole calculation process to complete before the result can be used. Another disadvantage is that it may take a lot of trials and errors to find settings that produce adequate quality in a given time frame. However, the big advantage of these methods is that they can be very efficient within the specified accuracy bounds, because the algorithm can concentrate on solving difficult parts of the rendering equation separately (e.g. splitting the image into independent regions, performing several calculation phases etc.), and then combining the result.

 

In other methods, the image is calculated progressively - in the beginning the error is large, but gets smaller as the algorithm performs additional calculations. At any one point of time, we have the partial result for the whole image. So, we can terminate the calculation and use the intermediate result.

Exact (unbiased or brute-force) methods.

Advantages:

 

Disadvantages:

 

Examples:

Approximate (biased) methods:

Advantages:

 

Disadvantages:

Examples:

 

Hybrid methods: exact methods used for some effects, approximate methods for others.

Advantages:

 

Disadvantages:

 

Examples:

II: Gathering vs shooting methods

Shooting methods

These start from the lights and distribute light energy throughout the scene. Note that shooting methods can be either exact or approximate.

 

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

 

Examples:

Gathering methods

These start from the camera and/or the scene geometry. Note that gathering methods can be either exact or approximate.

 

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

 

Examples

Hybrid methods

These combine shooting and gathering; again, hybrid methods can be either exact or approximate.

 

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

 

Examples:

III: Approximate methods: view-dependent vs view-independent solutions

Some approximate methods allow the caching of the GI solution. The cache can be either view-dependent or view-independent.

Shooting methods

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

Examples:

Gathering methods

Gathering methods and some hybrid methods allow for both view-dependent and view-independent solutions.

View-dependent solutions

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

 

Examples:

View-independent solutions

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

Examples:

Hybrid methods

Different combinations of view-dependent and view-independent techniques can be combined.

Examples:

GI methods supported by V-Ray

V-Ray supports a number of different methods for solving the GI equation - exact, approximate, shooting and gathering. Some methods are more suitable for some specific types of scenes.

Exact methods

V-Ray supports two exact methods for calculating the rendering equation: brute force GI and progressive path tracing. The difference between the two is that brute force GI works with traditional image construction algorithms (bucket rendering) and is adaptive, whereas path tracing refines the whole image at once and does not perform any adaptation.

Approximate methods

All other methods used V-Ray (irradiance map, light cache, photon map) are approximate methods.

Shooting methods

The photon map is the only shooting method in V-Ray. Caustics can also be computed with photon mapping, in combination with a gathering method.

Gathering methods

All other methods in V-Ray (brute force GI, irradiance map, light cache) are gathering methods.

Hybrid methods

V-Ray can use different GI engines for primary and secondary bounces, which allows you to combine exact and approximate, shooting and gathering algorithms, depending on what is your goal. Some of the possible combinations are demonstrated on the GI examples page.

 

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