Adaptive Sampling for Cycles.

This feature takes some inspiration from
"RenderMan: An Advanced Path Tracing Architecture for Movie Rendering" and
"A Hierarchical Automatic Stopping Condition for Monte Carlo Global Illumination"

The basic principle is as follows:
While samples are being added to a pixel, the adaptive sampler writes half
of the samples to a separate buffer. This gives it two separate estimates
of the same pixel, and by comparing their difference it estimates convergence.
Once convergence drops below a given threshold, the pixel is considered done.

When a pixel has not converged yet and needs more samples than the minimum,
its immediate neighbors are also set to take more samples. This is done in order
to more reliably detect sharp features such as caustics. A 3x3 box filter that
is run periodically over the tile buffer is used for that purpose.

After a tile has finished rendering, the values of all passes are scaled as if
they were rendered with the full number of samples. This way, any code operating
on these buffers, for example the denoiser, does not need to be changed for
per-pixel sample counts.

Reviewed By: brecht, #cycles

Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D4686

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/intern/cycles/device/device_task.h b/intern/cycles/device/device_task.h
index 972f6131092..8c4e682adb1 100644
--- a/intern/cycles/device/device_task.h
+++ b/intern/cycles/device/device_task.h
@@ -62,6 +62,19 @@ class DenoiseParams {
   }
 };
 
+class AdaptiveSampling {
+ public:
+  AdaptiveSampling();
+
+  int align_static_samples(int samples) const;
+  int align_dynamic_samples(int offset, int samples) const;
+  bool need_filter(int sample) const;
+
+  bool use;
+  int adaptive_step;
+  int min_samples;
+};
+
 class DeviceTask : public Task {
  public:
   typedef enum { RENDER, FILM_CONVERT, SHADER, DENOISE_BUFFER } Type;
@@ -115,6 +128,7 @@ class DeviceTask : public Task {
 
   bool need_finish_queue;
   bool integrator_branched;
+  AdaptiveSampling adaptive_sampling;
 
  protected:
   double last_update_time;