OllieBrown

I had a thought on how to do some basic unit testing to eliminate one possibility for error in my code. Each of the distribution functions I've implemented has never been tested, just copied out of the book (or worked up by myself) and assumed correct. This includes the code to distribute rays from a spotlight. So, I decided to write a quick program that would visualize each of these distribution functions as a way of verifying them (and also a first step towards testing the spotlight code).

Here's some images for each distribution:

This is a visualizaiton of the EqualScatter function that randomly distributes rays around the hemisphere. Initially I found an error here that distributed rays to the full sphere instead of the hemisphere but as you can see, this has been fixed.

This is the DiffuseScatter function which scatters rays across the hemisphere that fall-off according to the cosine function away from the surface normal. Note the less-dense rays near the surface.

This is the StratifiedSample function which discretizes the hemisphere into an MxN grid and sends out one random ray in each grid cell. The grid has small cells around the normal that increase in size towards the surface to simulate diffuse reflection. Note less density at the surface and the relatively more even distribution around the hemisphere.

I found, by doing this, that there was an error in my equal distribution function. Namely, it was distributing rays in the entire sphere not just the hemisphere. Easy fix. this would results in lots of lost photons and did help brighten the photon simulation which is always good considering how much darker it is than the raytracing version.

Here's the spotlight with different 'outter' values:

These three images show the spotlight photon distribution function set with different 'outer' values. Note that spotlight falloff between inner and outer is not supported.

This all looks good so I think the spotlight code is correct assuming I've interpreted the parameters correctly.