ProgramDissertation Update: Path Tracing in action
December 16, 2012 - 1:28 am by Joss Whittle Dissertation Graphics Java University
Thought I’d post an update of my dissertation project seeing as I haven’t posted anything in a while and my interim document is now submitted. As part of my progress towards GPU Accelerated Path Tracing I’ve modified the Java Ray Tracer shown previously to render using the Path Tracing algorithm. It’s a bit slow and clunky but for the most part it gets the job done.
The only problem has been that Java just isn’t cut out for this type of work. I don’t want to flare up the whole “Java is not week, it’s not 1995 any more…” debate but path tracing is just too much work for Java to handle. Even when running with additional memory and with the work split across an 8 core i7 processor StackOverflow’s are all to common a sight, and when they occur they ruin the image being rendered.
Below are some comparison images showing Ray Tracing (left), Photon Mapped Ray Tracing (middle), and Path Tracing (right).
And finally, here are some images showing the results of an experiment I ran looking into the possibility of performing constant time filtering techniques to under-sampled images in order to make them an acceptable quality for moving scenes. With a lot of trial and error I found that a good technique was perform a relatively cheap 3×3 Box Blur filter to smooth out any of the large dark noise areas and then to apply a 3×3 or 5×5 Median Filter to help retain edge definition while still smoothing the remaining noise.
