Photorealistic Path Tracer • Hacker News Board

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#81

Post by gigatexal » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #80

gigatexal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of google’s engineers are 3D graphics aficionados and can make compelling 3D scenes? There’s a scale of programmer out there: and whatever that scale is for you I put those who canary physics and computer graphics at the top.

Given your nickname that reads like you would put yourself at the top. Programming is programming. I've done 3D graphics, real time machine control, OS development, device drivers, game engines and whatever else I've come across in my professional career to date and none of it struck me as being on a different scale as other software development: it all boils down to meticulously specifying your thinking to a machine…

Ahh then I’m still a novice programmer at this stage and overestimated something I don’t even have the math to be able to do.

And nope, I wouldn’t know where to start to do anything in 3D graphics. But I can throw together a microservice API

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#82

Post by CDSlice » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

duck2 wrote: post #61

trishume wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that they're from a country where second grade means something different. That or I should have been looking for this school that teaches ray tracing in grade 2...

I meant second year in uni. Too much thinking in native language I guess.

Still really impressive! I'm in my second year of college right now and I know I'd have a hard time with it even though I'd love to learn

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#83

Post by danielbigham » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

UWaterloo CS488! Some of the funnest 200 hours of my life. Here's what I produced 17 years ago. Kind of embarrassing next to your slick work! http://www.danielbigham.ca/raytracer/raytracer.htm

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#84

Post by endergen » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

trishume wrote: post #11

spencerflem wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no way, you're Tristan Hume! My high school science research project was based on the eye tracking thing you made a while back :)

Cool, I actually wrote that eye tracking thing back when I was in high school myself. It's cool that people still find it useful, it's definitely not up to my current quality standards, but I remember scouring the internet for something like it back then and not finding anything so I guess nobody else has put something better online since.

Would love to see a link to what you are talking about

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#85

Post by jacobolus » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

endergen wrote: post #84

trishume wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, I actually wrote that eye tracking thing back when I was in high school myself. It's cool that people still find it useful, it's definitely not up to my current quality standards, but I remember scouring the internet for something like it back then and not finding anything so I guess nobody else has put something better online since.

Would love to see a link to what you are talking about

Probably https://github.com/trishume/eyeLike

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#86

Post by jacobolus » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #67

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He liked the content? I used to read programming books cover to cover 25 years ago when I was in High School/College. I don't do it so much these days, the books aren't as useful and I know too much so most of it ends up being redundant now. If you're learning something new you can consume voraciously.

I'm just wondering how people retain the content? I've read a lot of books over the last few years to learn AI/programming ranging from Sutton/Barto's Reinforcement Learning to Scott Meyer's Effective C++ series, and so much of it ends up flying away from my brain.

It seems like Hume retained the content by going and implementing it all in a working project.

I would also recommend that method, if you have time for it.

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#87

Post by stan_rogers » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #28

First of all, great work. In the "Final Scene" with DOF, the reflection of the mandelbox on the stapler seems to be more in focus than the stapler itself, is that actually correct?

Yes, it would be. The virtual image in the reflection would be "behind" the reflecting surface (with the distance being the sum of the camera-to-stapler distance and the stapler-to-mandelbox distance). You're not focusing on the reflecting surface, but on the object being reflected.

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#88

Post by magicalhippo » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #74

leowoo91 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost touched photon mapping there but as long as rays start only from the screen, there is nothing wrong calling anything varying as ray tracing. Limiting reflection count or having multiple rays (monte-carlo) are often aligned with priciples you described.

Photon mapping? As in can render diffraction?

Simplified, photon mapping is a technique where you shoot rays from the light sources and then record the hits on geometry. Name comes from pretending you're tracing a photon bouncing around.

Then, when doing the regular ray/path tracing, at each intersection of the camera-ray, you see if the intersection location is near any of the light-ray hits. If so, add in some contribution from the light-ray hits.

This avoids you having to explicitly check each light at each intersection point, saving you quite a number of visibility tests. Also, due to the smoothing kernel used when the "photon contributions" are added up, it leads to low-frequency noise rather than high-frequency noise that is normal in regular path tracing. This is especially noticeable when caustics are involved.

A nice introduction to the technique can be found here: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~emmanuel/courses/cs563/write_ups/zac...

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#89

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #81

jacquesm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given your nickname that reads like you would put yourself at the top. Programming is programming. I've done 3D graphics, real time machine control, OS development, device drivers, game engines and whatever else I've come across in my professional career to date and none of it struck me as being on a different scale as other software development: it all boils down to meticulously specifying your thinking to a machine…

Ahh then I’m still a novice programmer at this stage and overestimated something I don’t even have the math to be able to do. And nope, I wouldn’t know where to start to do anything in 3D graphics. But I can throw together a microservice API

[deleted]

Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer

#90

Post by endergen » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #85

endergen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to see a link to what you are talking about

Probably https://github.com/trishume/eyeLike

Yup. Was a lazy Google on that one. Here’s his blog entry on it: http://thume.ca/projects/2012/11/04/simple-accurate-eye-cent...