Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering
>> 2016,
Volume 17,
Issue 3
doi:
10.1631/FITEE.1500251
Review
A survey of photon mapping state-of-the-art research and future challenges
1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, Jinan 250101, China.2. Engineering Research Center of Digital Media Technology, Ministry of Education, Jinan 250101, China
Available online: 2016-03-17
Next
Previous
Abstract
Global illumination is the core part of photo-realistic rendering. The photon mapping algorithm is an effective method for computing global illumination with its obvious advantage of caustic and color bleeding rendering. It is an active research field that has been developed over the past two decades. The deficiency of precise details and efficient rendering are still the main challenges of photon mapping. This report reviews recent work and classifies it into a set of categories including radiance estimation, photon relaxation, photon tracing, progressive photon mapping, and parallel methods. The goals of our report are giving readers an overall introduction to photon mapping and motivating further research to address the limitations of existing methods.