Gold Bunny Lit by Sun and Sky

Close-up of photon contribution. Click to view large. (I originally rendered this image at 1618x1000, although Blogger has scaled it down to 1600x989, so there might have been a slight loss of quality.)

I rendered an image of a gold bunny lit by a sun and sky (the render from this post) that I rendered in my sky renderer. This was possible through the use of an HDR environment map, HDR environment map importance sampling, and HDR environment map photon emission. The top image below is the complete image—it contains all of the paths that light can take from the light source to the camera. The next image contains only direct illumination, as well as specular reflection of camera rays. The image after that shows only the photon contribution. Finally, the image above is a bigger, brighter, higher quality view of the photon contribution; a total of over one billion photons were stored in the photon map (not all at once) when creating that image.

All possible types of light paths.

Direct illumination, as well as specular reflection of camera rays.

Photon contribution.