GPU Pro 6

2

VI

Rendering Vector

Displacement-Mapped Surfaces

in a GPU Ray Tracer

Takahiro Harada

2.1 Introduction

Ray tracing is an elegant solution to render high-quality images. By combining

Monte Carlo integration with ray tracing, we can solve the rendering equation.

However, a disadvantage of using ray tracing is its high computational cost, which

makes render time long. To improve the performance, GPUs have been used.

However, GPU ray tracers typically do not have as many features as CPU ray

tracers. Vector displacement mapping is one of the features that we do not see

much in GPU ray tracers. When vector displacement mapping is evaluated on the

fly (i.e., without ...