Photon Differentials

A number of popular global illumination algorithms use density estimation to approximate indirect illumination. The density estimate is performed on finite points - particles - generated by a stochastic sampling of the scene. In the course of the sampling, particles, representing light, are stochastically emitted from the light sources and reflected around the scene. The sampling induces noise, which in turn is handled by the density estimate during the illumination reconstruction. Unfortunately, this noise reduction imposes a systematic error (bias), which is seen as a blurring of prominent illumination features. This is often not desirable as these may lose clarity or vanish altogether. We present an accurate method for reconstruction of indirect illumination with photon mapping. Instead of reconstructing illumination using classic density estimation on finite points, we use the correlation of light footprints, created by using Ray Differentials during the light pass. This procedure gives a high illumination accuracy, improving the trade-off between bias and variance considerable as compared to traditional particle tracing algorithms. In this way we preserve structures in indirect illumination.