[HN Gopher] A Retargetable Forward and Inverse Renderer (Differe...
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       A Retargetable Forward and Inverse Renderer (Differentiable
       Renderer)
        
       Author : harperlee
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2020-11-20 10:40 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rgl.epfl.ch)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rgl.epfl.ch)
        
       | blincoln wrote:
       | (c) ("caustic design" or "caustic engineering") is fascinating to
       | me. I'd never heard of this before, and it looks like it can even
       | be done with real-world materials:
       | 
       | https://lgg.epfl.ch/publications/2012/caustics/Architectural...
        
       | neolog wrote:
       | Why does (b) look so bad?
        
         | altarius wrote:
         | Bad as in "unrealistic", i.e. lacking details and textures?
         | Probably because they're researchers not 3D game designers. My
         | guess is that it is just showing a standardized raytracing
         | scene from a public research dataset used to compare
         | raytracers.
         | 
         | The scene is demonstrating their "lightpath vectorization". If
         | the claims work out, the real gains are the better use of the
         | full hardware capabilities by vectorizing multiple rays without
         | GPU/SIMD branch divergence - the divergence happens happens
         | when different rays intersect different objects and
         | dramatically slow down parallel work. That should really speed
         | up rendering so allow more rays and create less noise, more
         | detail.
        
           | joe_the_user wrote:
           | The funny thing is this looks to me like a realistic picture
           | of the inside of the McMansion. IE, a room whose contents are
           | more or less "fake" things. Plastic "wood grained" floor
           | (Pergo or whatever), Plastic "wood grained" table
           | (fiberboard, etc), Brand-new polyester mid-tier couch (room
           | never actually used), Pre-made pseudo-fancy gallery/bay
           | windows, higher grade fake ferns...
        
         | webmaven wrote:
         | _> Why does (b) look so bad?_
         | 
         | What's bad about it? The only thing I can see to criticize is
         | the fact that the 'rays' cast shadows onto the floor.
        
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       (page generated 2020-11-21 23:00 UTC)