An Efficient Denoising Algorithm for Global Illumination

Abstract

We propose a hybrid ray-tracing/rasterization strategy for real- time rendering enabled by a fast new denoising method. We factor global illumination into direct light at rasterized primary surfaces and two indirect lighting terms, each estimated with one path- traced sample per pixel. Our factorization enables efficient (biased) reconstruction by denoising light without blurring materials. We demonstrate denoising in under 10 ms per 1280 × 720 frame, compare results against the leading offline denoising methods, and include a supplement with source code, video, and data.