Week 24 — Coding Projects

Core

Improve the Week 20 renderer/integrator with better sampling.

• NumPy: Add stratified sampling or MIS in toy form. Compare noise and convergence.
• Metal: Add better sampling strategy to the rendering prototype with progressive accumulation and per-pixel random states. · Reading: MBT — advanced rendering accumulation / sampling-related sections.
• Vulkan: Same in progressive renderer built for iterative refinement. · Reading: Vulkan Book — rendering architecture for iterative refinement.
• CUDA: Same in CUDA path tracer with improved sampling strategy. · Reading: CUDA Book — improved sampling in Monte Carlo render kernels.
• Stretch: Add next-event estimation. Compare image variance side by side.
• Verify: Same sample budget produces cleaner results · Improved estimator still matches reference mean · Changes are measurable, not just aesthetic.