Temporal Coherence for Metropolis Light Transport

Abstract

Metropolis Light Transport is a powerful global illumination algorithm, yet it has some issues that make it less suitable for animation rendering. Due to the algorithm's local exploration of path space, difficult light paths can appear very late in the rendering process or might be missing from the final image altogether. This unpredictable convergence behaviour is especially troublesome when rendering animations, since these paths need to be rediscovered for every frame. An inability to rediscover difficult light paths across the entire animation causes unpleasant flickering artefacts. Our algorithm tackles this issue by introducing temporal mutations for Metropolis Light Transport, which perturb a light path from one point in time to another, potentially across many frames. This allows us to propagate difficult paths through the entire animation. Our technique supports multiple animation types, such as camera motion and object motion, and can robustly handle different shutter setups. The convergence speed of individual frames with motion blur is increased and convergence variations between frames are diminished, especially for specular transport and difficult indirect lighting.