Patent ID: 8922556

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for light gathering in a homogeneous media, the method comprising: without photon representation, using a light ray gathering module to trace (i) one or more lighting rays emitted from a light source and (ii) one or more viewing rays emitted from view source in a first space; representing each lighting ray as a Plücker coordinate in a second space; representing each viewing ray as a Plücker coefficient describing a hyper plane in the second space; determining the distance between at least one of the Plücker coordinates and at least one of the corresponding Plücker coefficients in the second space, such that the distance determined in the second space is related to the distance of the corresponding lighting ray and viewing ray in the first space; computing (i) initial flux of the one or more lighting rays in the second space and (ii) initial transmittance to the view source of the one or more viewing rays in the second space; and evaluating a final radiance along the viewing ray based upon a lighting ray passing nearest to the viewing ray.