CS 6650, Fall 2002

David Cline

Supplemental Path Tracing Images

A Skull with hemispherical area light and 1 spherical light. 100 paths per pixel. This is perhaps the ideal scene for path tracing.	Given enough samples, path tracing can simulate all modes of light transport. Here I’m using 4500 paths per pixel.
Cornell box with sphere showing caustics. 512 paths per pixel. This scene works pretty well, but there are no reflective surfaces.	The same scene, except the sphere is reflective as well as transparent. 300 paths per pixel. It would take thousands of samples per pixel to get rid of the speckle noise.
Here is another scene that shows how specular surfaces can play havoc with a path tracer. With all diffuse surfaces there is little noise with 200 samples per pixel.	When specular surfaces are introduced in the scene the path tracer has trouble sampling the light paths. Here, 512 samples per pixel were used. Significant speckles are visible throughout.