Stochastic Progressive Photon Mapping for Dynamic Scenes

Abstract

Stochastic Progressive Photon Mapping (SPPM) is a method to simulate consistent global illumination. It is especially useful for complicated light paths like caustics seen through a glass surface. Up to now, SPPM can only be applied to a static scene and noise-free images require hours to compute. Our approach is to extend this method to dynamic scenes (DSPPM) for an efficient simulation of animated objects and materials. We identify both hit point and photon information that can be re-used for the pixel statistics of multiple frames. In comparison to an SPPM simulation performed for each frame, we achieve a 1.96 - 9.53 speedup in our test scenes without changing correctness or simulation quality.