Progressive Point‐Light‐Based Global Illumination

We present a physically based progressive global illumination system that is capable of simulating complex lighting situations robustly by efficiently using both light and eye paths. Specifically, we combine three distinct algorithms: point‐light‐based illumination which produces low‐noise approximations for diffuse inter‐reflections, specular gathering for glossy and singular effects and a caustic histogram method for the remaining light paths. The combined system efficiently renders low‐noise production quality images with indirect illumination from arbitrary light sources including inter‐reflections from caustics and allows for simulating depth of field and dispersion effects. Our system computes progressive approximations by continuously refining the solution using a constant memory footprint without the need of pre‐computations or optimizing parameters beforehand.