Towards Bidirectional Path Tracing at Pixar

Christophe Hery, Ryusuke Villemin, Florian Hecht

Abstract:

On Finding Dory and Piper, we were faced with rendering a lot of water, or creatures and sets seen through water and glass. We worked with production artists to give controls for resolving these difficult light transports. We also learned to cheat these effects where appropriate. In these course notes, we will elaborate on some of the constraints that bidirectional path tracing imposed on us, and our solutions for them.

Paper (PDF)