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A comment on Porting a Ray Tracer to Rust, Part 1. Parent comment

Re:Porting a Ray Tracer to Rust, Part 1 by berkut on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @07:27AM (#8819087)
Erm... Photon mapping uses "forward" path tracing to trace photons from the lights, not the camera.

In conventional (uni-directional) path tracing, rays are shot from the camera only, and bounce around the scene (other than for light visibility testing).

Bi-directional path tracing uses rays originating at both the camera and light sources going in opposite directions.

VCM is a combination of Bi-directional path tracing and photon mapping.

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Re:Porting a Ray Tracer to Rust, Part 1 by CyberDildonics on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @08:22AM (#8819235)
I think he was talking about rays when he said 'photons', not photon mapping in regards to the specific technique.
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