Accelerated bounding volume hierarchy (bvh) traversal for shadow rays

Abstract

Systems and techniques are provided for accelerated shadow ray traversal for a hierarchical structure for ray tracing. For instance, a process can include obtaining a hierarchical acceleration data structure, the hierarchical acceleration data structure including one or more primitives of a scene object. Two or more nodes included in a same level of the hierarchical acceleration data structure can be sorted into a sort order, the sort order based on a sorting parameter value determined for each respective node of the two or more nodes. The sorting parameter value can be associated with a probability of determining a ray-opaque primitive intersection for each respective node of the two or more nodes. An intersection between a shadow ray and an opaque primitive included in a node of the two or more nodes can be determined based on traversing the hierarchical acceleration data structure using the sort order.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.