Physically Based Rendering

Physically based rendering studies how light travels through a scene and interacts with surfaces and participating materials to create an image. Forward methods use rendering equations, BRDFs, ray tracing, and spectral or polarization models, while inverse rendering estimates geometry, materials, and lighting from images. Neural methods, Gaussian representations, and differentiable renderers increasingly combine learned priors with explicit physical models for faster reconstruction and relighting. A central challenge is balancing physical consistency and editable scene properties with speed, sparse observations, and the complexity of effects such as indirect light, reflection, and translucency.