Rendering Equation

Origin #

@inproceedings{kajiya1986rendering,
  title={The rendering equation},
  author={Kajiya, James T},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques},
  pages={143--150},
  year={1986}
}

Relation to Raytracing #

Raytracing is a numerical simulation of the rendering equation. Instead of calculating the integral over the hemisphere and using a Reflectance Distribution Function , send some rays in the direction where most interesting things happen, reflection, shadow ray etc.

Using Radiosity #

Don’t integrate over all the viewing directions, but instead integrate over all the visible surface patches, and use a Visibility Function .

rendering_equation_c01841e0de59e40c63213553f611e91906a1c32d.svg

Full equation:

rendering_equation_2dd5b763c654c7d1a33c71912de6741f314f590e.svg