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Main Authors: Fan, Zhimin, Guo, Jie, Wang, Yiming, Xiao, Tianyu, Zhang, Hao, Zhou, Chenxi, Chen, Zhenyu, Hong, Pengpei, Guo, Yanwen, Yan, Ling-Qi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13409
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author Fan, Zhimin
Guo, Jie
Wang, Yiming
Xiao, Tianyu
Zhang, Hao
Zhou, Chenxi
Chen, Zhenyu
Hong, Pengpei
Guo, Yanwen
Yan, Ling-Qi
author_facet Fan, Zhimin
Guo, Jie
Wang, Yiming
Xiao, Tianyu
Zhang, Hao
Zhou, Chenxi
Chen, Zhenyu
Hong, Pengpei
Guo, Yanwen
Yan, Ling-Qi
contents Finding valid light paths that involve specular vertices in Monte Carlo rendering requires solving many non-linear, transcendental equations in high-dimensional space. Existing approaches heavily rely on Newton iterations in path space, which are limited to obtaining at most a single solution each time and easily diverge when initialized with improper seeds. We propose specular polynomials, a Newton iteration-free methodology for finding a complete set of admissible specular paths connecting two arbitrary endpoints in a scene. The core is a reformulation of specular constraints into polynomial systems, which makes it possible to reduce the task to a univariate root-finding problem. We first derive bivariate systems utilizing rational coordinate mapping between the coordinates of consecutive vertices. Subsequently, we adopt the hidden variable resultant method for variable elimination, converting the problem into finding zeros of the determinant of univariate matrix polynomials. This can be effectively solved through Laplacian expansion for one bounce and a bisection solver for more bounces. Our solution is generic, completely deterministic, accurate for the case of one bounce, and GPU-friendly. We develop efficient CPU and GPU implementations and apply them to challenging glints and caustic rendering. Experiments on various scenarios demonstrate the superiority of specular polynomial-based solutions compared to Newton iteration-based counterparts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_13409
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Specular Polynomials
Fan, Zhimin
Guo, Jie
Wang, Yiming
Xiao, Tianyu
Zhang, Hao
Zhou, Chenxi
Chen, Zhenyu
Hong, Pengpei
Guo, Yanwen
Yan, Ling-Qi
Graphics
I.3.3
Finding valid light paths that involve specular vertices in Monte Carlo rendering requires solving many non-linear, transcendental equations in high-dimensional space. Existing approaches heavily rely on Newton iterations in path space, which are limited to obtaining at most a single solution each time and easily diverge when initialized with improper seeds. We propose specular polynomials, a Newton iteration-free methodology for finding a complete set of admissible specular paths connecting two arbitrary endpoints in a scene. The core is a reformulation of specular constraints into polynomial systems, which makes it possible to reduce the task to a univariate root-finding problem. We first derive bivariate systems utilizing rational coordinate mapping between the coordinates of consecutive vertices. Subsequently, we adopt the hidden variable resultant method for variable elimination, converting the problem into finding zeros of the determinant of univariate matrix polynomials. This can be effectively solved through Laplacian expansion for one bounce and a bisection solver for more bounces. Our solution is generic, completely deterministic, accurate for the case of one bounce, and GPU-friendly. We develop efficient CPU and GPU implementations and apply them to challenging glints and caustic rendering. Experiments on various scenarios demonstrate the superiority of specular polynomial-based solutions compared to Newton iteration-based counterparts.
title Specular Polynomials
topic Graphics
I.3.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13409