If you need to skip or postpone a deadline or an exam for any reason (e.g., health, family), please notify your study advisor, cc: the course coordinator (p.vangorp@uu.nl), as soon as possible. No sensitive details are needed in this initial email. If necessary, the study advisor will discuss details with you in confidence. Please ask the study advisor to send their recommendation to the course coordinator directly.

You are not automatically eligible for a retake if you miss a deadline or exam without notifying your study advisor and course coordinator.

BLOCK 2 Schedule

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

An optional C++ programming template is available on GitHub.
Other good open-source codebases include PBRT or Mitsuba.

INTERESTING RENDERERS

The course includes two small software projects that should be worked on in pairs. It is allowed to work on this alone, but be aware that the scope of the project is tuned for duos.

1. Acceleration structures: You will (implement and) compare the performance of at least two acceleration structures in a ray-tracing-based renderer.
   
2. Specialize: You will be developing your own implementation of a recent research paper in a ray-tracing-based renderer. You are free to choose your specific focus from a list of suggested papers.
   

The final grade for the practical assignments is calculated as follows:

practical grade P = (P1 + 2 * P2) / 3

GRADING

In order to pass the course, you must meet these requirements:

Practical grade P = (P1 + 2 * P2) / 3
Exam grade E
Final grade F = (2 * P + E) / 3

Where

P >= 4.5
E >= 4.5
F >= 5.5.

RETAKES AND REQUIREMENTS

There will be an opportunity for a retake exam or one retake assignment. In order to qualify, you must meet all assignment deadlines and participate in the exam (or obtain an extension or exception), and you must have a final grade (F) of at least 4.0. The retake exam or assignment replaces the corresponding exam or assignment.

IMPORTANT: you can only do a retake if you have both a high-enough but non-passing grade (i.e., 4.0 <= F < 6.0).

Transfers from a previous year

If you are retaking this course it may be possible to transfer only your previous practical grades to this academic year. You must always retake the exam. Contact the lecturer to request a transfer of practical grades.

LITERATURE

• Aila and Laine 2009. Understanding the efficiency of ray traversal on GPUs. In Proc. High Performance Graphics 2009, 145-149.
• Benthin et al. 2017. Improved two-level BVHs using partial re-braiding. In Proc. High Performance Graphics 2017, 1-8.
  
• Bikker 2019. Probability theory for physically based rendering. Blog post series.
• Bikker 2019. Wavefront path tracing. Blog post.
  
• Bikker 2022. How to build a BVH. Blog post series.
• Bitterli et al. 2020. Spatiotemporal reservoir resampling for real-time ray tracing with dynamic direct lighting. In Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH 2020, ACM Transactions on Graphics 39(4):148.
  
• Colbert et al. 2010. Importance sampling for production rendering. ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Course Notes, 5-38. Local copy.
  
• Cook et al. 1984. Distributed ray tracing. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 18(3):137-145.
• Ganestam et al. 2015. Bonsai: Rapid bounding volume hierarchy generation using mini trees. Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques 4(3).
  
• Horn et al. 2007. Interactive k-D tree GPU raytracing. In Proc. Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games 2007, 167-174.
• Kajiya 1986. The rendering equation. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 20(4):143-150.
• Laine et al. 2013. Megakernels considered harmful: Wavefront path tracing on GPUs. In Proc. High Performance Graphics 2013, 137-143.
• Lauterbach et al. 2009. Fast BVH construction on GPUs. Computer Graphics Forum 28(2):375-384.
  
• MacDonald and Booth 1990. Heuristics for ray tracing using space subdivision. The Visual Computer 6:153-166.
• Meister et al. 2021. A survey on bounding volume hierarchies for ray tracing. Computer Graphics Forum 40(2):683-712.
  
• Overbeck et al. 2008. Large ray packets for real-time Whitted ray tracing. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing 2008, 41-48.
• Purcell et al. 2002. Ray tracing on programmable graphics hardware. In Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH 2002, ACM Transactions on Graphics 21(3):703-712.
• Torrance and Sparrow 1967. Theory for off-specular reflection from roughened surfaces. Journal of the Optical Society of America 57(9):1105-1114.
• van Antwerpen 2011. Unbiased physically based rendering on the GPU. Master thesis, TU Delft.
• Veach 1997. Robust Monte Carlo methods for light transport simulation. PhD thesis, Stanford University.
• Vorba et al. 2019. Path guiding in production. ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Course Notes.
  
• Wald et al. 2001. Interactive rendering with coherent ray tracing. Computer Graphics Forum 20(3):153-165.
• Wald et al. 2008. Getting rid of packets - Efficient SIMD single-ray traversal using multi-branching BVHs. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing 2008, 49-57.
• Walter et al. 2007. Microfacet models for refraction through rough surfaces. In Proc. Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2007, 195-206.
  
• Walter et al. 2008. Fast agglomerative clustering for rendering. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing 2008, 81-86.
• Whitted 1980. An improved illumination model for shaded display. Communications of the ACM 23(6):343-349.

Recommended books (available for free online)

• Pharr et al. 2023. Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation, Fourth Edition. MIT Press.
  
• Haines and Akenine-Möller 2019. Ray Tracing Gems: High-Quality and Real-Time Rendering with DXR and Other APIs. Apress.
  
• Marrs et al. 2021. Ray Tracing Gems II: Next Generation Real-Time Rendering with DXR, Vulkan, and OptiX. Apress.