Sony Corporation

Sony Pictures Technologies Inc.

Solid Angle Sl

Christopher Kulla

Marcos Fajardo Orellano

Provided are systems and methods that address the problem of single scattering in homogeneous volumes. In one implementation, an importance sampling technique is provided that avoids a singularity near point light sources. The system and method can be extended to the situation of area lights of arbitrary shapes. The error caused by the non-constant distance to the finite-extent area light is distributed by using random sample points within the area light as points from which lighting is calculated for sampling points along the ray.

System and method for importance sampling of area lights in participating media

Provided are systems and methods to perform ray marching for production ray tracing in inhomogeneous participating media. The systems and methods allow a reduction of the quadratic complexity without giving up the benefits of accurate ray traced lighting. In one implementation, the task of ray marching is reformulated into a task of transforming an unknown, spatially varying volume into a collection of piecewise homogeneous segments. Being homogeneous, inexpensive analytical formulas may be employed for evaluating and sampling the transmission term at arbitrary points in the segments.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States of America

Christopher Kulla