Real-Time Editing of Path-Traced Scenes with Prioritized Re-Rendering

Abstract

With recent developments in GPU ray tracing performance and (AI-accelerated) noise reduction techniques, Monte Carlo Path Tracing at real-time rates becomes a viable solution for interactive 3D scene editing, with growing support in popular software. However, even for minor edits (e.g., adjusting materials or moving small objects), current solutions usually discard previous samples and the image formation process is started from scratch. In this paper, we present two adaptive, priority-based re-rendering techniques with incremental updates, prioritizing the reconstruction of regions with high importance, before gradually moving to less important regions. The suggested methods automatically identify and schedule sampling and accumulation of immediately affected regions. An extensive user study analyzes whether such prioritized renderings are beneficial to interactive scene editing, comparing them with same-time conventional re-rendering. Our evaluation shows that even with simple prio rity policies, there is a significant preference for such incremental rendering techniques for interactive editing of small objects over full-screen re-rendering with denoising.