Accelerated Light Propagation Through Participating Media

Abstract

Monte Carlo path tracing is a simple and effective way to solve the volume rendering equation. However, propagating light paths through participating media can be very costly because of the need to simulate potentially many scattering events. This paper presents a simple technique to accelerate path tracing of homogeneous participating media. We use a traditional path tracer for scattering near the surface but switch to a new approach for handling paths that penetrate far enough inside the medium. These paths are determined by sampling from a set of precomputed probability distributions, which avoids the need to simulate individual scattering events or perform ray intersection tests with the environment. We demonstrate cases where our approach leads to accurate and more efficient rendering of participating media, including subsurface scattering in translucent materials.