Patent ID: 8259131

Claim:
A method of performing ray tracing, comprising: identifying, in a frame buffer and by operation of one or more computer processors, areas of pixels containing low contrast colors based on a set of preliminary rays issued into a three-dimensional scene, comprising: before determining final colors of adjacent pixels: issuing preliminary rays which pass through the adjacent pixels and into the three-dimensional scene, wherein, for each pixel, the preliminary rays pass through the same one or more points in the pixel forming a pattern of points in the pixel, performing ray tracing with the preliminary rays to determine initial colors of the adjacent pixels based on an intersection of the preliminary rays and an object within the three-dimensional scene or an intersection of the preliminary rays and a background of the three-dimensional scene, and comparing the initial colors of the adjacent pixels to each other to determine if the initial colors are of low contrast based on a predefined threshold; and determining the final colors of each of the adjacent pixels, wherein if the initial colors are of low contrast, the final colors of each of the adjacent pixels is set to the corresponding initial color, and wherein if the initial colors are not of low contrast, the final colors of each of the adjacent pixels is set based on tracing a set of additional rays generated in response to the preliminary rays intersecting the object within the three-dimensional scene and calculating additional color contributions to the pixel based on one or more objects intersected by the secondary rays.