【GAMES 101】Ray Tracing

Basic Ray-Tracing Algorithm

Recursive Ray Tracing：递归地弹射光线

Ray-Surface Intersection

Ray Intersection With Implicit Surface

光线与隐式表面求交，解方程即可

Ray Intersection With Triangle

光线与显式表面求交，则要求光线与三角形面的交点

思路：先求光线与三角形所在平面的交点，再判断交点是否在三角形内

用点法式求光线与平面的交点：

Accelerating Ray-Surface Intersection

Bounding Volumes

先检测光线与包围盒是否相交，如果光线与包围盒不相交，也不会和物体相交

Axis-Aligned Bounding Box（AABB）：轴对齐包围盒，盒子的边与坐标轴平行

Ray Intersection With Axis Aligned Box

• The ray enters the box only when it enters all pairs of slabs

• The ray exits the box as long as it exits any pair of slabs

$$\begin{gathered} t_{enter}=\max (t_{min}) \\ {t}_{exit}=\min (t_{max}) \end{gathered}$$

光线与包围盒相交的条件：

$$(t_{enter}<t_{exit})\wedge (t_{exit}\ge 0)$$

Spatial Partitions

按照空间划分包围盒

KD-Tree

叶子结点：store list of objects

中间结点：store split axis, split position, and pointers to child nodes

缺点：可能有一个物体在多个包围盒中的情况

Object Partitions

Bounding Volume Hierarchy(BVH)

BVH划分后可以保证一个物体只在一个包围盒中，但包围盒与包围盒之间可能有重叠的地方

每次选择最长的一条边，从中间物体的位置划分

Radiometry

用物理正确的方式描述光线能量的传播

Radiant Energy and Flux

Radiant Energy：the energy of electromagnetic radiation，光源辐射出的能量

$$Q[J=Joule]$$

Radiant Flux(Power)：the energy emitted, reflected, transmitted or received, per unit time，单位时间内辐射的能量

photons flowing through a sensor in unit time

$$\Phi \equiv \frac{dQ}{dt}[W=Watt][lm=lumen]$$

Radiant Intensity / Irradiance / Radiance

Solid Angle

$$\Omega =\frac{A}{r^2}$$

球的立体角是$4\pi$

$$\begin{gathered} dA=(rd\theta )(rsin\theta d\varphi )=r^{2}sin\theta d\theta d\varphi \\ d\omega =\frac{dA}{r^2}=sin\theta d\theta d\varphi \end{gathered}$$

Radiant Intensity：the power per unit solid angle emitted by a point light source

$$I(\omega )\equiv \frac{d\Phi }{d\omega }[\frac{W}{sr}][\frac{lm}{sr}=cd=candela]$$

Irradiance：the power per unit area incident on a surface point

$$E(\vec{x})\equiv \frac{d\Phi (\vec{x})}{dA}[\frac{W}{m^2}][\frac{lm}{m^2=lux}]$$

Radiance：the power emitted, reflected, transmitted or received by a surface, per unit solid angle, per projected unit area

$$L(P,\omega )\equiv \frac{d^2\Phi (p,\omega )}{d\omega dA\cos \theta }$$

The quantity associated with a ray

• Radiance: Irradiance per solid angle
  

• Radiance: Intensity per projected unit area
  

Irradiance就是Radiance在半球上的积分

BRDF

Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function

Radiance from direction ${\omega }_i$ turns into the power E that dA receives, then power E will become the radiance to any other direction ${\omega }_o$

BRDF: represents how much light is reflected into each outgoing direction ${\omega }_r$ from each incoming direction ${\omega }_i$

Rendering Equation

$$L_o(p,{\omega }_o)=L_e(p,{\omega }_o)+{\int }_{\Omega +}{L}_i(p,{\omega }_i)f_r(p,{\omega }_i,{\omega }_o)(n\cdot {\omega }_i)d{\omega }_i$$

上面铺垫了很多，都是为了得到这个方程。到了这里，却不必再有什么多余的解释。

大道至简！

Monte Carlo Integration

hard to solve an integral, then estimate it by averaging random samples of the function’s value

$$\int f(x)dx=\frac{1}{N}\sum _{i=1}^N\frac{f(X_i)}{p(X_i)}$$

Path Tracing

Whitted-Style Ray Tracing

• Specular reflections / refractions

• Stop bouncing at diffuse surfaces

缺点：无法实现glossy，diffuse表面也没有反射

Monte Carlo in Solving Path Tracing

渲染方程就是${\omega }_i$在半球上的定积分，用蒙特卡洛方法可以求解

伪代码：

If ray r hits object q, use the direct illumination value at q as the light it reflects to p

Problem 1: Explosion of rays

当N很大时，计算量非常大

Path Tracing: only 1 ray is traced at each shading point，在一个着色点上只追踪一个${\omega }_i$

Generate N rays in a pixel

Problem 2: Recursive never stop

保持期望不变的情况下，有一定概率停止递归

Problem 3: Waste of rays

Sampling the Light

defination of solid angle: projected area on the unit sphere

把对$d\omega$的积分改写为对$dA$的积分

Final Version of the Algorithm

把radiance分为两部分，一部分是直接来自光源的，另一部分是来自其它物体反射的