Global Illumination Rendering I

Review these materials relative to path-tracing for global-illumination rendering.

• Scratchapixel: Monte-Carlo Foundations
• Scratchapixel: Monte-Carlo Methods in Practice
• Scratchapixel: Global-Illumination Path-Tracing
• Graphics Codex Excerpt on Radiometry and Rendering Equation. See the Graphics Codex here.
• SIGGRAPH 2002 Course Notes on Global Illumination.
• smallpt renderer: Global-Illumination Path Tracer in 99 lines of C++.
• Notes on Importance Sampling by Tobias Franke.

With the second test scheduled this Wednesday, be familiar with the key terms and units of radiometry; the rendering equation in different forms; the concepts of BSDF, BRDF, and BTDF; the main ideas underlying Monte-Carlo evaluation; the basics of sampling; and the general path-tracing algorithm as a solution for the rendering equation.