Distributed ray tracing

Diffuse called ray tracing, ray tracing and stochastic or distributed ray tracing, is a 1984 published algorithm for image synthesis.

When diffuse ray tracing is an extension of the normal ray tracing, in which, in certain situations, not just a jet, but several randomly generated rays are used to determine a value. Through this Monte Carlo simulation, certain "soft" or " fuzzy " phenomena can be simulated.

In particular, the following effects can be obtained by diffuse ray tracing:

• True, soft light shade ( by scanning the visible surface of the light sources )
• Blurred reflections on shiny surfaces ( by distributing the direction of the reflected rays according to the BRDF )
• Depth of Field ( by scanning the lens surface of the virtual camera system )
• Motion blur ( by temporal distribution of the rays during the " exposure time " of a frame )
• Anti- aliasing of the image ( by distributing the radiation over the area of ​​the pixel in the image plane )

The nature of the process requires a more or less high number of beams to produce low noise images.

By diffuse ray tracing, it is possible to increase the quality of the image and to take into account certain effects, but allows diffuse ray tracing in itself is not the calculation of global illumination, as are emitted only when reflective or shiny, but not for diffuse surfaces secondary beams. These methods such as path tracing, photon mapping or extended forms of radiosity were developed.