An Efficient Denoising Algorithm for Global Illumination

We propose a hybrid ray-tracing/rasterization strategy for real-time rendering enabled by a fast new denoising method. We factor global illumination into direct light at rasterized primary surfaces and two indirect lighting terms, each estimated with one path-traced sample per pixel. Our factorization enables efficient (biased) reconstruction by denoising light without blurring materials. We demonstrate denoising in under 10 ms per 1280×720 frame, compare results against the leading offline denoising methods, and include a supplement with source code, video, and data.

Authors

Michael Mara (Stanford University)
Morgan McGuire (NVIDIA & Williams College)
Benedikt Bitterli (Dartmouth College)
Wojciech Jarosz (Dartmouth College)

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