Primary Sample Space Path Guiding

Abstract

Guiding path tracing in light transport simulation has been one of the practical choices for variance reduction in production rendering. For this purpose, typically structures in the spatial-directional domain are built. We present a novel scheme for unbiased path guiding. Different from existing methods, we work in primary sample space. We collect records of primary samples as well as the luminance that the resulting path contributes and build a multiple dimensional structure, from which we derive random numbers that are fed into the path tracer. This scheme is executed completely outside the rendering kernel. We demonstrate that this method is practical and efficient. We manage to reduce variance and zero radiance paths by only working in the primary sample space.