And here a sneak peak behind the development curtain.

You can see all steps that got me to the final product. 😅

Next Event Estimation clearly wins - fewer samples, faster convergence, same physical accuracy ⚡

However, it seems like NEE results in slightly brighter images. That points to a bug, the converged outcome should be identical.

A proper denoising algorithm could speed up image generation further.

- N = 1000
Both images finally look similar — but NEE reached this quality already with much fewer samples 🙌. So those extra samples were maybe not needed.

Render time: ~10–15 minutes 💻

- N = 100 samples
NEE is almost fully converged, while path tracing still has plenty of grain and noise

- N = 10 samples
At 10 samples, NEE is starting to clean up nicely 👌

Path tracing still struggles — lots of missed light paths and black areas

- N=1 sample:
With just one sample per pixel, brute force path tracing wastes tons of rays — you can see all the black pixels 🕳️

NEE, on the other hand, already captures the main light contributions 💡 (still noisy, of course)

⚙️ Method: Ray tracing
🎥 1 sample per frame, 30 fps
⏱️ ~1–2 minutes render time / video

🌍🌕 Switching perspectives to a geocentric scene with moon and stars in relative motion.

Don't get dizzy...

How it's going. 🧊

#debugging

⚙️ Making it faster
Path tracing gives the best result (check out e.g. the ceiling), but is super slow.
To optimize, I’m adding:
• Direct light sampling — directly sampling visible light sources to reduce wasted rays.
• Denoising — cleaning up noise so fewer samples are needed for a smooth result.

🌌 Path Tracing Renderer
It simulates full global illumination: Light bounces multiple times, capturing indirect light and color bleeding.
The single-sample image is almost black, most rays never hit the lamp.
After ~15000 samples/pixel (≈3 hr), the scene is still noisy.

🔦 Ray Tracing Renderer
Introduces stochastic light sampling for reflections, refractions, and light sources.

The first image shows a single sample per pixel (noisy but fast). The second is the converged result after 2500 samples.

I have to figure out what causes the few "hot pixels"...

💡 Deterministic Renderer
Adds physically based light interactions: direct light (and therefore shadows), reflections, and refractions are handled explicitly.

No randomness — everything is computed deterministically for stable, noise-free results.

🎨 Simple Renderer
This one ignores all light transport — it just shows the raw base colors of materials.
It’s useful for debugging geometry, textures, and UV mapping before diving into lighting.