Nvidia Corporation

Christopher Ryan Wyman

Aaron Eliot Lefohn

Peter Schuyler Shirley

Morgan McGuire

David Patrick Luebke

Marco Salvi

Anjul Patney

Michael Mara

Brent Leonard Oster

Peter-Pike Sloan

Jon N Hasselgren

Ignacio Llamas

Shiqiu Liu

Cyril Crassin

Jacob Munkberg

Henry Packard Moreton

Eric Brian Lum

Robert Anthony Alfieri

William P Newhall, Jr

Yury Y Uralsky

Anton S Kaplanyan

Eric Enderton

Kayvon Fatahalian

Yong He

G Evan Hart, Jr

Yubo Zhang

John Matthew Burgess

Jacopo Pantaleoni

Joohwan Kim

Jakub Boksansky

Pascal Gautron

Cyril Jean-Francois Crassin

Paula Eveliina Jukarainen

Christoph H Schied

Nir Benty

Devices, systems, and techniques to incorporate lighting effects into computer-generated graphics. In at least one embodiment, a virtual scene comprising a plurality of lights is rendered by randomly sampling a set of lights from among the plurality of lights prior to rendering a frame of graphics. A subset of the set of lights is selected and used to render pixels within one or more portions of the frame.

Using importance resampling to reduce the memory incoherence of light sampling

Devices, systems, and techniques to incorporate lighting effects into computer-generated graphics. In at least one embodiment, a virtual scene comprising a plurality of lights is rendered by subdividing the virtual area and stored, in a record corresponding to a subdivision of the virtual area, information indicative of one or more lights in the virtual area selected based on a stochastic model. Pixels near a subdivision are rendered based on the light information stored in the subdivision.

Grid-based light sampling for ray tracing applications

Apparatuses, systems, and techniques to render computer graphics. In at least one embodiment, a first one or more lights are selected from among lights in a virtual scene to be rendered as a frame of graphics, and a second one or more lights are selected from among lights used to render one or more pixels in at least one of a prior frame or the current frame. A pixel of the current frame is rendered using the first and second one or more lights, and a light is selected for reuse in rendering a subsequent frame from among the first and second one or more lights.

Spatiotemporal resampling with decoupled shading and reuse

Disclosed approaches may leverage the actual spatial and reflective properties of a virtual environment—such as the size, shape, and orientation of a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) lobe of a light path and its position relative to a reflection surface, a virtual screen, and a virtual camera—to produce, for a pixel, an anisotropic kernel filter having dimensions and weights that accurately reflect the spatial characteristics of the virtual environment as well as the reflective properties of the surface. In order to accomplish this, geometry may be computed that corresponds to a projection of a reflection of the BRDF lobe below the surface along a view vector to the pixel. Using this approach, the dimensions of the anisotropic filter kernel may correspond to the BRDF lobe to accurately reflect the spatial characteristics of the virtual environment as well as the reflective properties of the surface.

Reflection denoising in ray-tracing applications

This application discloses techniques for generating and querying projective hash maps. More specifically, projective hash maps can be used for spatial hashing of data related to N-dimensional points. Each point is projected onto a projection surface to convert the three-dimensional (3D) coordinates for the point to two-dimensional (2D) coordinates associated with the projection surface. Hash values based on the 2D coordinates are then used as an index to store data in the projective hash map. Utilizing the 2D coordinates rather than the 3D coordinates allows for more efficient searches to be performed to locate points in the 3D space. In particular, projective hash maps can be utilized by graphics applications for generating images, and the improved efficiency can, for example, enable a game streaming application on a server to render images transmitted to a user device via a network at faster frame rates.

Projective hash maps

The present invention facilitates efficient and effective image processing. A network can comprise: a first system configured to perform a first portion of lighting calculations for an image and combing results of the first portion of lighting calculations for the image with results of a second portion of lighting calculations; and a second system configured to perform the second portion of lighting calculations and forward the results of the second portion of the lighting calculations to the first system. The first and second portion of lighting calculations can be associated with indirect lighting calculations and direct lighting calculations respectively. The first system can be a client in a local location and the second system can be a server in a remote location (e.g., a cloud computing environment). The first system and second system can be in a cloud and a video is transmitted to a local system.

Asynchronous lighting for image illumination

Disclosed approaches may leverage the actual spatial and reflective properties of a virtual environment&#x2014;such as the size, shape, and orientation of a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) lobe of a light path and its position relative to a reflection surface, a virtual screen, and a virtual camera&#x2014;to produce, for a pixel, an anisotropic kernel filter having dimensions and weights that accurately reflect the spatial characteristics of the virtual environment as well as the reflective properties of the surface. In order to accomplish this, geometry may be computed that corresponds to a projection of a reflection of the BRDF lobe below the surface along a view vector to the pixel. Using this approach, the dimensions of the anisotropic filter kernel may correspond to the BRDF lobe to accurately reflect the spatial characteristics of the virtual environment as well as the reflective properties of the surface.

A global illumination data structure (e.g., a data structure created to store global illumination information for geometry within a scene to be rendered) is computed for the scene. Additionally, reservoir-based spatiotemporal importance resampling (RESTIR) is used to perform illumination gathering, utilizing the global illumination data structure. The illumination gathering includes identifying light values for points within the scene, where one or more points are selected within the scene based on the light values in order to perform ray tracing during the rendering of the scene.

Reservoir-based spatiotemporal importance resampling utilizing a global illumination data structure

Photon-based image illumination rendering

Image illumination rendering system and method

A method, computer readable medium, and system are disclosed for performing spatiotemporal filtering. The method includes the steps of applying, utilizing a processor, a temporal filter of a filtering pipeline to a current image frame, using a temporal reprojection, to obtain a color and auxiliary information for each pixel within the current image frame, providing the auxiliary information for each pixel within the current image frame to one or more subsequent filters of the filtering pipeline, and creating a reconstructed image for the current image frame, utilizing the one or more subsequent filters of the filtering pipeline.

Performing spatiotemporal filtering

A method, computer readable medium, and system are disclosed for rendering images utilizing a foveated rendering algorithm with post-process filtering to enhance a contrast of the foveated image. The method includes the step of receiving a three-dimensional scene, rendering the 3D scene according to a foveated rendering algorithm to generate a foveated image, and filtering the foveated image using a contrast-enhancing filter to generate a filtered foveated image. The foveated rendering algorithm may incorporate aspects of coarse pixel shading, mipmapped texture maps, linear efficient anti-aliased normal maps, exponential variance shadow maps, and specular anti-aliasing techniques. The foveated rendering algorithm may also be combined with temporal anti-aliasing techniques to further reduce artifacts in the foveated image.

Perceptually-based foveated rendering using a contrast-enhancing filter

A method for generating temporally stable hash values reduces visual artifacts associated with stochastic sampling of data for graphics applications. A given hash value can be generated from a scaled and discretized object-space for a geometric object within a scene. Through appropriate scaling, the hash value can be discretized and remain constant within a threshold distance from a pixel center. As the geometric object moves within the scene, a hash value associated with a given feature of the geometric object remains constant because the hash value is generated using an object-space coordinate anchored to the feature. In one embodiment, alpha testing threshold values are assigned random, but temporally stable hash output values generated using object-space coordinate positions for primitive fragments undergoing alpha testing. Alpha tested fragments are temporally stable, beneficially improving image quality.

System and method for generating temporally stable hashed values

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Christopher Ryan Wyman