Patent ID: 8576227

Claim:
A method for estimating the light transported between a first point A and a second point B, the method comprising: selecting, utilizing a processor, a plurality of first sub-paths extending from a first point A; selecting a plurality of second sub-paths extending from a second point B, wherein each of the first sub-paths extending from the first point A and the second sub-paths extending from the second point B is defined by both an associated path index, and an associated path length which is defined by an associated terminating vertex; constructing a plurality of transport paths, wherein each of the plurality of the first sub-paths is coupled to a respective one of the plurality of the second sub-paths to form one transport path, wherein each transport path comprises one first sub-path and one second sub-path, and wherein constructing the plurality of transport paths comprises: constructing a light transport matrix by sorting the plurality of first sub-paths into a plurality of different first sub-path groups, and sorting the plurality of second sub-paths into a plurality of different second sub-path groups; wherein each of the first sub-path groups and each of the second sub-path groups collectively form a different sub-matrix within the light transport matrix, each sub-matrix comprising a plurality of column indices and a plurality of row indices, wherein each column index corresponds to one of the first sub-paths, and each row index corresponds to one of the second sub-paths, and wherein a plurality of the sub-matrices form the light transport matrix; ordering the column indices of one or more of the sub-matrices, comprising: selecting one of the plurality of sub-matrices, selecting a first column index of the selected sub-matrix, the first column index corresponding to one of the first sub-paths defined by a particular path length, and selecting, from among a predefined number of remaining column indices, a second column index of the selected sub-matrix based upon the first selected column index, the second column index corresponding to another one of the first sub-paths defined by the particular path length; sampling two or more of the plurality of the transport paths to obtain a plurality of sampled transport paths; and calculating a light transport value for each of the plurality of sampled transport paths to estimate the light transported between the first point A and the second point B, wherein the light transport value for each of the plurality of sampled transport paths is at least one of a light level, a color, and an intensity.