Nvidia patents faster lighting calculations for realistic 3D graphics
Nvidia describes a method for speeding up how computers calculate realistic lighting in 3D virtual environments. Instead of calculating every light bounce from scratch, the system groups similar light interactions together and shares their data to save time.
In the filing’s own words
Disclosed approaches provide for interactions of secondary rays of light transport paths in a virtual environment to share lighting contributions when determining lighting conditions for a light transport path. Interactions may be shared based on similarities in characteristics (e.g., hit locations), which may define a region in which interactions may share lighting condition data. The region may correspond to a texel of a texture map and lighting contribution data for interactions may be accumulated to the texel spatially and/or temporally, then used to compute composite lighting contribution data that estimates radiance at an interaction. Approaches are also provided for reprojecting lighting contributions of interactions to pixels to share lighting contribution data from secondary bounces of light transport paths while avoiding potential over blurring.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A method comprising: selecting, based at least on at least one characteristic of a first ray interaction in a virtual environment, a cache from a plurality of caches that correspond to a location of the first ray interaction and respective spatial regions in the virtual environment; storing a lighting contribution that corresponds to the first ray interaction in the selected cache; computing, using the stored lighting contribution retrieved from the selected cache, lighting information for a second ray interaction in the virtual environment based at least on the second ray interaction being associated with the selected cache; and generating a rendered frame of the virtual environment using the lighting information.
Facts
- Company
- Nvidia (NVIDIA Corporation)
- Official title
- GLOBAL ILLUMINATION USING SHARED LIGHTING CONTRIBUTIONS FOR INTERACTIONS IN PATH TRACING
- Publication number
- US20260278915A1
- Application number
- 19680948
- Filed
- May 18, 2026
- Published
- Sep 17, 2026
- Inventors
- 1
- Claims
- 20
Classified under
G06T 15/06 Physics & computingG06T 15/506 Physics & computingMore from Nvidia in AI & software
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.