The Goal

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The Goal

The primary goal here is to achieve global illumination with an algorithm that is capable of handling various types of geometry as well as different types of materials. As noted in Chapter 5, ray tracing and radiosity suffer from specific drawbacks. You need a new algorithm that overcomes these drawbacks. Each new algorithm promises to achieve a specific advantage over the previous ones, which should be your goal.

You need an algorithm that is efficient and robust for rendering synthetic images. You want to be able to take the positive aspects from the previous algorithms and derive an algorithm with fantastic rendering results and minimal problems. But it's impossible to develop a perfect solutionsimulating light in all of its complexity is a very daunting task and even the most advanced rendering algorithms today are far from being perfect.

One reason for this is simply that many aspects of light are still not yet fully understood . For now, let's work with what you have. The primary objective is to implement an algorithm that tracks the flow of light in a global manner throughout the scene. Light is everywhere and you must track the overall energy that moves around in space. If you think about it for a moment, the energy that arrives at a surface can do two things. The energy can be absorbed into the object as heat or it can be transmitted through the object (as seen in refraction) or reflected (either diffusively or specularly) to another object. This simple concept can create the most realistic images if simulated properly. This is what you intend to simulate when you implement photon mapping.

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