Distributed Out‐of‐Core Stochastic Progressive Photon Mapping

At present, stochastic progressive photon mapping (SPPM) is one of the most comprehensive methods for a consistent global illumination computation. Even though the number of photons is unlimited due to their progressive nature, the scene size is still bound by the available main memory. In this paper, we present the first consistent out‐of‐core SPPM algorithm. In order to cope with large scenes, we automatically subdivide the geometry and parallelly trace photons and eye rays in a portal‐based system, distributed across multiple machines in a commodity cluster. Moreover, modifications of the original SPPM method are introduced that keep both the utilization of tracer machines high and the network traffic low. Therefore, compared to a portal‐based single machine setup, our distributed approach achieves a significant speedup. We compare a GPU‐based with a CPU‐based implementation and demonstrate our system in multiple large test scenes of up to 90 million triangles.

[1]  Andreas Dietrich,et al.  OptiX: a general purpose ray tracing engine , 2010, SIGGRAPH 2010.

[2]  Jan Kautz,et al.  Precomputed radiance transfer for real-time rendering in dynamic, low-frequency lighting environments , 2002 .

[3]  Daniel Méneveaux,et al.  A Hierarchical Topology‐Based Model for Handling Complex Indoor Scenes , 2006, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[4]  Yves D. Willems,et al.  Bi-directional path tracing , 1993 .

[5]  Alexander Keller,et al.  Instant radiosity , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[6]  Brent Burley,et al.  Sorted Deferred Shading for Production Path Tracing , 2013, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[7]  Matthias Zwicker,et al.  Progressive photon mapping: A probabilistic approach , 2011, TOGS.

[8]  James T. Kajiya,et al.  The rendering equation , 1986, SIGGRAPH.

[9]  Philipp Slusallek,et al.  Light transport simulation with vertex connection and merging , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[10]  Yves Bertrand,et al.  Building 3D indoor scenes topology from 2D architectural plans , 2007, GRAPP.

[11]  John D. Owens,et al.  Out‐of‐core Data Management for Path Tracing on Hybrid Resources , 2009, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[12]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Rendering complex scenes with memory-coherent ray tracing , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[13]  Toshiya Hachisuka,et al.  Stochastic progressive photon mapping , 2009, ACM Trans. Graph..

[14]  Toshi Kato,et al.  "Kilauea"--parallel global illumination renderer , 2002, Parallel Comput..

[15]  Dinesh Manocha,et al.  Cache‐Efficient Layouts of Bounding Volume Hierarchies , 2006, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[16]  Per H. Christensen,et al.  An Irradiance Atlas for Global Illumination in Complex Production Scenes , 2004, Rendering Techniques.

[17]  Jan Kautz,et al.  The State of the Art in Interactive Global Illumination , 2012, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[18]  H. Jensen,et al.  Stochastic progressive photon mapping , 2009, ACM Trans. Graph..

[19]  Seth J. Teller,et al.  Partitioning and ordering large radiosity computations , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[20]  Philipp Slusallek,et al.  Interactive Global Illumination using Fast Ray Tracing , 2002, Rendering Techniques.

[21]  Timo Aila,et al.  PantaRay: fast ray-traced occlusion caching of massive scenes , 2010, ACM Trans. Graph..

[22]  David K. McAllister,et al.  OptiX: a general purpose ray tracing engine , 2010, ACM Trans. Graph..

[23]  Daniel Méneveaux,et al.  Out of core photon-mapping for large buildings , 2005, EGSR '05.

[24]  H. Jensen,et al.  Progressive photon mapping , 2008, SIGGRAPH 2008.

[25]  Timo Aila,et al.  PantaRay: fast ray-traced occlusion caching of massive scenes , 2010, SIGGRAPH 2010.

[26]  Andreas Dietrich,et al.  Spatial splits in bounding volume hierarchies , 2009, High Performance Graphics.

[27]  Per H. Christensen,et al.  Ray Differentials and Multiresolution Geometry Caching for Distribution Ray Tracing in Complex Scenes , 2003, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[28]  Janne Kontkanen,et al.  Coherent Out‐of‐Core Point‐Based Global Illumination , 2011, EGSR '11.

[29]  Anton Kaplanyan,et al.  Adaptive progressive photon mapping , 2013, TOGS.

[30]  Henrik Wann Jensen,et al.  Global Illumination using Photon Maps , 1996, Rendering Techniques.

[31]  Jacopo Pantaleoni,et al.  A path space extension for robust light transport simulation , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[32]  Toshiya Hachisuka,et al.  Parallel progressive photon mapping on GPUs , 2010, SIGGRAPH ASIA.

[33]  Kun Zhou,et al.  GPU-based out-of-core many-lights rendering , 2013, ACM Trans. Graph..