Notes
Measured graphics notes from earlier work
Notes
Lab notes
Process notes from earlier graphics work. Each entry keeps its measurements. The agent systems are on the work page.
The Penumbra Condition, Radiance Cascades in Flatland
Why a shadow is crisp at the washer drum and blurry down the aisle, and the global-illumination trick built on that.
The Half-Vector Jacobian, Visible Normals of Isotropic GGX
Why sunset glare on a wet road is so hard to render cleanly, and the trick that fixes it.
The Toksvig Factor: Specular Exponent from Normal Length
Why distant metal in games fizzes and sparkles as you move, and how to calm it.
Shadow Map Bias as Geometric Error
Why game shadows come out striped or float off people's feet, and the one setting behind both.
Multiple Importance Sampling and the Balance Heuristic
Those stray white dots in a noisy render are called fireflies, and one simple blend makes them go away.
Light Sampling and the Area Jacobian
Aim your rays at a lamp and forget one small factor, and the whole room comes out at the wrong brightness.
Solid Angle and the Rendering Equation
Why a skylight overhead lights a room far more than the same window low on the wall.
Importance Sampling: Phong Lobe vs Cosine
Two ways to aim the same rays: one leaves bright speckles, the other leaves dark holes.
Reprojection and Depth Discontinuities
Why a character moving in front of a wall can leave a smeared trail behind them in games.
Temporal Accumulate vs TAA Ghosting
The ghostly trails behind moving objects in modern games, and the trick that erases them.
Tone Mapping: Scene-Referred to Display-Referred
Why the sun in a photo blows out to flat white, and how renderers squeeze real brightness onto a screen.
Split-Sum Image-Based Lighting
How games make shiny objects reflect a whole room without tracing a single ray.
Parallax Occlusion Mapping: Height March, Flat Silhouette
Game bricks that look deep head-on turn out to be painted flat once you see them edge-on.
Anisotropic Footprints: Jacobian, Ellipse, Over-Blur
Why floor textures in games turn to mush when you look along them, and how to keep them sharp.
How a mipmap presents in the scene
Distant brick walls in games blur on purpose, because the alternative is a crawling, shimmering mess.