ARPΔ: Hardware-Accelerated Ray-Traced Photon Differentials

Adrian De Barro, Keith Bugeja, Sandro Spina

2025

Abstract

Photon mapping is a widely used rendering technique that provides biased but consistent global illumination through particle and radius-based density estimation. In this work, we enhance photon mapping by integrating photon differentials, representing each photon as a beam connected to its neighbours. Our proposed method, ARPΔ, dynamically adjusts bandwidth by leveraging changes in both the photon’s position and direction, allowing for adaptive control based on the photon’s path through the scene. Additionally, ARPΔ combines multiple photon differential strategies to enable efficient global illumination on ray tracing hardware, seamlessly transitioning to progressive photon mapping in highly anisotropic conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that ARPΔ achieves image quality comparable to state-of-the-art photon mapping techniques, validating its effectiveness in producing high-fidelity renders.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

De Barro A., Bugeja K. and Spina S. (2025). ARPΔ: Hardware-Accelerated Ray-Traced Photon Differentials. In Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-728-3, SciTePress, pages 300-307. DOI: 10.5220/0013216800003912

in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp25,
author={Adrian De Barro and Keith Bugeja and Sandro Spina},
title={ARPΔ: Hardware-Accelerated Ray-Traced Photon Differentials},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP},
year={2025},
pages={300-307},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013216800003912},
isbn={978-989-758-728-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP
TI - ARPΔ: Hardware-Accelerated Ray-Traced Photon Differentials
SN - 978-989-758-728-3
AU - De Barro A.
AU - Bugeja K.
AU - Spina S.
PY - 2025
SP - 300
EP - 307
DO - 10.5220/0013216800003912
PB - SciTePress