473 Final Project

Monte Carlo Ray Tracing

Monte Carlo Ray Tracing for global illumination involves sending out multiple rays from a hit point around its normal to calculate the "global color" coming toward that point. This can then be recursively done for those points, and so on until you finally make a lot of lighting calculations and return back. The result is a very nice looking image that has color bleeding between objects. For example, the left box has green on its left from the green wall.

Photon Mapping

For my final project, I implemented Photon Mapping, which attempts to simulate the way photons behave. A large amount of photons are sent out from a light source, randomly reflected, refracted, or aborbed, and then their locations are stored in a spacial data stucture (most often a KD tree). Then during the render, the lighting for each point is calculated based on nearby photons. This provides, in my opinion, a much more realistic looking render. The color bleeding seems more realisitc, the walls are a more realistic color, and very nice soft shadows are created thanks to the many photons. The results can be seen below :).