Simulating the Effects of Light
When we see the world around us, we are really seeing the cumulative effect of trillions upon trillions of tiny little particles called photons. These photons are emitted by energy sources like the sun; and after traveling a long distance, they will bounce off some objects and get refracted by others, until they finally strike the retinas in the backs of our eyes. Our eyes and brain take it from there and reconstruct the activity of all of these photons into the world that we can see around us.
Computer graphics have historically simulated the effects of light by either simulating the behavior of actual photons or by using shortcuts to fake that behavior. One way of simulating the behavior of the actual photons ...
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