This thesis is dedicated to ray tracing based rendering methods, primarily the original ray tracing. Besides introducing a brief historical overview of algorithms from the family, it presents all the essential tools, techniques and physics needed for designing a rendering application in detail. A significant part of the document consists of an implementation of a photorealistic rendering application for interactive graphics 3D virtual scenes. The focus is on rendering without using any additional model information. The thesis includes descriptions and explanations of specific problems and their solutions.

The aim of this work is to create a simple raytracer with IPP library, which will use the frameless rendering technique. The first part of this work focuses on the raytracing method. The next part analyzes the frameless rendering technique and its adaptive version with focus on adaptive sampling. Third part describes the IPP library and implementation of a simple raytracer using this library. The last part evaluates the speed and rendering quality of the implemented system.

This thesis deals with practical implementation of photon mapping algorithm. To achieve better results some basic and some more advanced methods of global illumination has been examined. These time demanding algorithms are often practically unusable and their further optimization is necessary. Optimized ray tracer is essential for practical implementation. Computing diffuse interreflection by Monte Carlo sampling is also very time demanding operation. Therefore it is appropriate to use it along with proper interpolation.

La technique de tracé de chemins est la méthode Monte Carlo la plus populaire en infographie pour résoudre le problème de l'illumination globale. Une image produite par tracé de chemins est beaucoup plus photoréaliste que les méthodes standard tel que le rendu par rasterisation et même le lancer de rayons. Mais le tracé de chemins est coûteux et converge lentement, produisant une image bruitée lorsqu'elle n'est pas convergée. De nombreuses méthodes visant à accélérer le tracé de chemins ont été développées, mais chacune présente ses propres défauts et contraintes. Dans les dernières avancées en apprentissage profond, en particulier dans le domaine des modèles génératifs conditionnels, il a été démontré que ces modèles sont capables de bien apprendre, modéliser et tirer des échantillons à partir de distributions complexes. Comme le tracé de chemins dépend également d'un tel processus sur une distribution complexe, nous examinons les similarités entre ces deux problèmes et modélisons le processus de tracé de chemins comme un processus génératif. Ce processus peut ensuite être utilisé pour construire un estimateur efficace avec un réseau neuronal afin d'accélérer le temps de rendu sans trop d'hypothèses sur la scène. Nous montrons que notre estimateur neuronal (NPPP), utilisé avec le tracé de chemins, peut améliorer les temps de rendu d'une manière considérable sans beaucoup compromettre sur la qualité du rendu. Nous montrons également que l'estimateur est très flexible et permet à un utilisateur de contrôler et de prioriser la qualité ou le temps de rendu, sans autre modification ou entraînement du réseau neuronal. / Path tracing is one of the most popular Monte Carlo methods used in computer graphics to solve the problem of global illumination. A path traced image is much more photorealistic compared to standard rendering methods such as rasterization and even ray tracing. Unfortunately, path tracing is expensive to compute and slow to converge, resulting in noisy images when unconverged. Many methods aimed to accelerate path tracing have been developed, but each has its own downsides and limitiations. Recent advances in deep learning, especially with conditional generative models, have shown to be very capable at learning, modeling, and sampling from complex distributions. As path tracing is also dependent on sampling from complex distributions, we investigate the similarities between the two problems and model the path tracing process itself as a conditional generative process. It can then be used to build an efficient neural estimator that allows us to accelerate rendering time with as few assumptions as possible. We show that our neural estimator (NPPP) used along with path tracing can improve rendering time by a considerable amount without compromising much in rendering quality. The estimator is also shown to be very flexible and allows a user to control and prioritize quality or rendering time, without any further training or modifications to the neural network.

This thesis develops a generalized form of Monte Carlo integration called Resampled Importance Sampling. It is based on the importance resampling sample generation technique. Resampled Importance Sampling can lead to significant variance reduction over standard Monte Carlo integration for common rendering problems. We show how to select the importance resampling parameters for near optimal variance reduction. We also combine RIS with stratification and with Multiple Importance Sampling for further variance reduction. We demonstrate the robustness of this technique on the direct lighting problem and achieve up to a 33% variance reduction over standard techniques. We also suggest using RIS as a default BRDF sampling technique.

This dissertation focuses on the many issues that arise from the visual rendering problem. Of primary consideration is light transport simulation, which is known to be computationally expensive. Monte Carlo methods represent a simple and general class of algorithms often used for light transport computation. Unfortunately, the images resulting from Monte Carlo approaches generally suffer from visually unacceptable noise artifacts. The result of any light transport simulation is, by its very nature, an image of high dynamic range (HDR). This leads to the issues of the display of such images on conventional low dynamic range devices and the development of data compression algorithms to store and recover the corresponding large amounts of detail found in HDR images. This dissertation presents our contributions relevant to these issues. Our contributions to high dynamic range image processing include tone mapping and data compression algorithms. This research proposes and shows the efficacy of a novel level set based tone mapping method that preserves visual details in the display of high dynamic range images on low dynamic range display devices. The level set method is used to extract the high frequency information from HDR images. The details are then added to the range compressed low frequency information to reconstruct a visually accurate low dynamic range version of the image. Additional challenges associated with high dynamic range images include the requirements to reduce excessively large amounts of storage and transmission time. To alleviate these problems, this research presents two methods for efficient high dynamic range image data compression. One is based on the classical JPEG compression. It first converts the raw image into RGBE representation, and then sends the color base and common exponent to classical discrete cosine transform based compression and lossless compression, respectively. The other is based on the wavelet transformation. It first transforms the raw image data into the logarithmic domain, then quantizes the logarithmic data into the integer domain, and finally applies the wavelet based JPEG2000 encoder for entropy compression and bit stream truncation to meet the desired bit rate requirement. We believe that these and similar such contributions will make a wide application of high dynamic range images possible. The contributions to light transport simulation include Monte Carlo noise reduction, dynamic object rendering and complex scene rendering. Monte Carlo noise is an inescapable artifact in synthetic images rendered using stochastic algorithm. This dissertation proposes two noise reduction algorithms to obtain high quality synthetic images. The first one models the distribution of noise in the wavelet domain using a Laplacian function, and then suppresses the noise using a Bayesian method. The other extends the bilateral filtering method to reduce all types of Monte Carlo noise in a unified way. All our methods reduce Monte Carlo noise effectively. Rendering of dynamic objects adds more dimension to the expensive light transport simulation issue. This dissertation presents a pre-computation based method. It pre-computes the surface radiance for each basis lighting and animation key frame, and then renders the objects by synthesizing the pre-computed data in real-time. Realistic rendering of complex scenes is computationally expensive. This research proposes a novel 3D space subdivision method, which leads to a new rendering framework. The light is first distributed to each local region to form local light fields, which are then used to illuminate the local scenes. The method allows us to render complex scenes at interactive frame rates. Rendering has important applications in mixed reality. Consistent lighting and shadows between real scenes and virtual scenes are important features of visual integration. The dissertation proposes to render the virtual objects by irradiance rendering using live captured environmental lighting. This research also introduces a virtual shadow generation method that computes shadows cast by virtual objects to the real background. We finally conclude the dissertation by discussing a number of future directions for rendering research, and presenting our proposed approaches.

Simuler efficacement l'éclairage global est l'un des problèmes ouverts les plus importants en infographie. Calculer avec précision les effets de l'éclairage indirect, causés par des rebonds secondaires de la lumière sur des surfaces d'une scène 3D, est généralement un processus coûteux et souvent résolu en utilisant des algorithmes tels que le path tracing ou photon mapping. Ces techniquesrésolvent numériquement l'équation du rendu en utilisant un lancer de rayons Monte Carlo. Ward et al. ont proposé une technique nommée irradiance caching afin d'accélérer les techniques précédentes lors du calcul de la composante indirecte de l'éclairage global sur les surfaces diffuses. Krivanek a étendu l'approche de Ward et Heckbert pour traiter le cas plus complexe des surfaces spéculaires, en introduisant une approche nommée radiance caching. Jarosz et al. et Schwarzhaupt et al. ont proposé un modèle utilisant le hessien et l'information de visibilité pour raffiner le positionnement des points de la cache dans la scène, raffiner de manière significative la qualité et la performance des approches précédentes. Dans ce mémoire, nous avons étendu les approches introduites dans les travaux précédents au problème du radiance caching pour améliorer le positionnement des éléments de la cache. Nous avons aussi découvert un problème important négligé dans les travaux précédents en raison du choix des scènes de test. Nous avons fait une étude préliminaire sur ce problème et nous avons trouvé deux solutions potentielles qui méritent une recherche plus approfondie. / Efficiently simulating global illumination is one of the most important open problems in computer graphics. Accurately computing the effects of indirect illumination, caused by secondary bounces of light off surfaces in a 3D scene, is generally an expensive process and often solved using algorithms such as path tracing or photon mapping. These approaches numerically solve the rendering equation using stochastic Monte Carlo ray tracing. Ward et al. proposed irradiance caching to accelerate these techniques when computing the indirect illumination component on diffuse surfaces. Krivanek extended the approach of Ward and Heckbert to handle the more complex case of glossy surfaces, introducing an approach referred to as radiance caching. Jarosz et al. and Schwarzhaupt et al. proposed a more accurate visibility-aware Hessian-based model to greatly improve the placement of records in the scene for use in an irradiance caching context, significantly increasing the quality and performance of the baseline approach. In this thesis, we extended similar approaches introduced in these aforementioned work to the problem of radiance caching to improve the placement of records. We also discovered a crucial problem overlooked in the previous work due to the choice of test scenes. We did a preliminary study of this problem, and found several potential solutions worth further investigation.

En synthèse d’images, reproduire les effets complexes de la lumière sur des matériaux transluminescents, tels que la cire, le marbre ou la peau, contribue grandement au réalisme d’une image. Malheureusement, ce réalisme supplémentaire est couteux en temps de calcul. Les modèles basés sur la théorie de la diffusion visent à réduire ce coût en simulant le comportement physique du transport de la lumière sous surfacique tout en imposant des contraintes de variation sur la lumière incidente et sortante. Une composante importante de ces modèles est leur application à évaluer hiérarchiquement l’intégrale numérique de l’illumination sur la surface d’un objet. Cette thèse révise en premier lieu la littérature actuelle sur la simulation réaliste de la transluminescence, avant d’investiguer plus en profondeur leur application et les extensions des modèles de diffusion en synthèse d’images. Ainsi, nous proposons et évaluons une nouvelle technique d’intégration numérique hiérarchique utilisant une nouvelle analyse fréquentielle de la lumière sortante et incidente pour adapter efficacement le taux d’échantillonnage pendant l’intégration. Nous appliquons cette théorie à plusieurs modèles qui correspondent à l’état de l’art en diffusion, octroyant une amélioration possible à leur efficacité et précision. / In image synthesis, reproducing the complex appearance of objects with subsurface light scattering, such as wax, marble and skin, greatly contributes to the realism of an image. Unfortunately, this added realism comes at a high computational cost. Models based on diffusion theory aim to reduce this computational cost by simulating the physical behaviour of subsurface light scattering while imposing smoothness constraints on the incident and outgoing light fields. An important component of these models is how they are employed to hierarchically evaluate the numerical integral of lighting over the surface of an object. This thesis will first review the existing literature on realistic subsurface lighting simulation, before investigating in more depth the application and extension of modern diffusion models in image synthesis. In doing so, we propose and evaluate a new hierarchical numerical integration technique that uses a novel frequency analysis of the incident and outgoing light fields to reliably adapt the sampling rate during integration. We realize our resulting theory in the context of several state-of-the-art diffusion models, providing a marked improvement in their efficiency and accuracy.

Fyzikálně přijatelné osvětlení v reálném čase je často dosaženo použitím aproximací. Současné metody často aproximují globální osvětlení v prostoru obrazu s využitím schopností moderních grafických karet. Dva techniky z této kategorie, screen-space ambient occlusion a screen-space directional occlusion jsou popsány detailněji v této práci. Screen-space directional occlusion je zobecněná verze screen-space ambient occlusion s podporou jednoho difúzního odrazu a závislostí na směrové informaci světla. Hlavním cílem projektu bylo experimentování s těmito metodami. Pro uniformní distribuci náhodných vzorek pro obě metody byla použita Halton sekvence. Pro potlačení šumu je použita bilaterální filtrace, která bere do úvahy geometrické vlastnosti scény. Metody jsou dál zrychleny použitím nižších rozlišení pro výpočet. Rekonstrukce výsledků do původní velikosti pro vytvoření konečného obrazu je realizována pomoci joint bilateral upsamplingu. Kromě metod globálního osvětlení byly v práci použity aj metody pro mapování stínů a HDR osvětlení.

This paper is focused on realistic rendering of interior environments with varying lighting conditions. It proposes methods of setting properties of light sources to achieve a specific scene appearence. It mainly works with light comming from a sky and sun to the scene and describes this light in relation to weather conditions, time of day and overcast factor. The goal is creating easily configurable system in which a single parameter change leads to significant change of lighting conditions. All these changes should be presented in a short video.