What's most impressive is they've separated the rendering algorithm (Mitsuba 2) from the retargeting framework (Enoki).
Enoki look amazingfrom their paper. It supports vectorized CPUs, JITTed GPUs, forward/back autodiff, nested array types.
Mitsuba 2 then expands that range even further by templating on key types and operations. For example, a materials color property might be represented by a RGB tuple for basic rendering, or an array that captures the full spectrum of light frequencies for a spectral renderer. They supply some example code, which is absurdly clean, as it's devoid of any specifics of storage and calculation, and focusses just on the high level algorithm.
They claim that the GPU impl is superior to PyTorch / TensorFlow in some regards as it can split the difference between eagerly sending every operation to the GPU, or processing the entire graph at once.
The amount of work and understanding to produce something like this is insane - they just casually mention how they've implemented a novel light transport scheme, an "extensive mathematical support library", and sophisticated python bindings.
What's most impressive is they've separated the rendering algorithm (Mitsuba 2) from the retargeting framework (Enoki).
Enoki look amazingfrom their paper. It supports vectorized CPUs, JITTed GPUs, forward/back autodiff, nested array types.
Mitsuba 2 then expands that range even further by templating on key types and operations. For example, a materials color property might be represented by a RGB tuple for basic rendering, or an array that captures the full spectrum of light frequencies for a spectral renderer. They supply some example code, which is absurdly clean, as it's devoid of any specifics of storage and calculation, and focusses just on the high level algorithm.
They claim that the GPU impl is superior to PyTorch / TensorFlow in some regards as it can split the difference between eagerly sending every operation to the GPU, or processing the entire graph at once.
The amount of work and understanding to produce something like this is insane - they just casually mention how they've implemented a novel light transport scheme, an "extensive mathematical support library", and sophisticated python bindings.