Accelerating Monte Carlo Renderers by Ray Histogram Fusion

Abstract

(2014)]. In this filter, each pixel in the image is characterized by the colors of the rays that reach its surface. Pixels are compared using a statistical distance on the associated ray color distributions. Based on this distance, it decides whether two pixels can share their rays or not. The RHF filter is consistent: as the number of samples increases, more evidence is required to average two pixels. The algorithm provides a significant gain in PSNR, or equivalently accelerates the rendering process by using many fewer Monte Carlo samples without observable bias. Since the RHF filter depends only on the Monte Carlo samples color values, it can be naturally combined with all rendering effects. Source CodeThe source code and the online demo are accessible at the IPOL web page of this article 1 .