Month: April 2013

kd tree construction using the surface area heuristic, stack-based traversal, and the hyperplane separation theorem

Test render of a stripped down version of the Sponza model (approximately 150,000 triangles). 4,258 samples.

In this post we will employ the hyperplane separation theorem and the surface area heuristic for kd tree construction to improve the performance of our path tracer. Previous posts have relied simply on detecting intersections between an axis aligned bounding box and the minimum bounding box of a triangle primitive. By utilizing the hyperplane separation …

Path tracer: thin lens, texture mapping, Fresnel equations, and smooth shading

1800 samples. A render illustrating Fresnel reflection and texture mapping.

A few new features have been added to our path tracer. The depth of field extension has been reworked slightly using the thin lens equation allowing us to specify a focal length and aperture. Fresnel equations have been added to more accurately model the behavior of light at the interface between media of different refractive …