Nvidia Corporation

Jim Kjell David Nilsson

Tomas G Akenine-Moller

Tomas Guy Akenine-Möller

Robert M Toth

Magnus Andersson

Johan Pontus Andersson

Image quality can be improved by rendering the image based on an importance map that indicates regions of the image that will benefit from more samples. Adaptive sampling determines a number of samples for each pixel of the image using a target sampling rate and the importance map for the image. The number of samples for each pixel needs to be a non-negative integer value, so the per-pixel sampling rates are quantized using per-pixel random values. The resulting quantized sampling rates provides a distribution of samples that closely matches the importance map. The per-pixel random values may vary over time so that the average of the distribution more closely matches the importance map.

Adaptive sampling at a target sampling rate

A texture level of detail (LOD) approximation may be performed utilizing ray differentials and a G-buffer. For example, a scene to be rendered is identified, and a G-buffer of the scene is rendered. Additionally, ray tracing is started for the scene, and during the ray tracing, a ray differential is created by accessing the G-buffer. Further, the created ray differential is appended to a current ray, and the created ray differential is traced.

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Malmö, Sweden

Jim Kjell David Nilsson