Path Tracing and Ray Tracing Implementation

This skill provides guidance for implementing path tracers and ray tracers, particularly for image reconstruction tasks where a target image must be matched within a similarity threshold.

When to Use This Skill

• Implementing ray tracers or path tracers in C/C++
• Reconstructing images by reverse-engineering scene parameters
• Building rendering systems with geometric primitives (spheres, planes)
• Tasks requiring image similarity matching (L2 norm, cosine similarity)
• Rendering scenes with shadows, reflections, or procedural textures

Workflow: Baseline-First Development

Phase 1: Establish a Working Baseline

Before any optimization or parameter tuning, establish a complete working render:

1. Start with minimal samples - Use S=1 or S=2 to verify the pipeline produces complete output