Patent ID: 8872826

Claim:
A biased method of performing ray marching for rendering of a volume of inhomogeneous participating media, comprising: a. defining a virtual ray extending from a point or pixel on a virtual viewing plane; b. dividing the virtual ray into a plurality of segments, each segment associated with at least a local volume of inhomogeneous participating media; c. for each segment, sampling a local value of σ s and σ a associated with the respective local volume; d. from the sampled values of σ s and σ a , developing a probability density function proportional to a transmission term multiplied by a local scattering coefficient; e. sampling a point within each segment along the virtual ray using the developed probability density function; f. for each sampled point, tracing shadow rays to a light source and calculating a contribution to the point or pixel on the virtual viewing plane using the traced rays; and g. coloring the point or pixel on the virtual viewing plane according to the contribution.