Object illumination in hybrid rasterization and ray traced 3-d rendering

Apparatus for rendering a sequence of frames, the apparatus comprising:

• first computing hardware configured with software capable of maintaining a light map associated with one or more objects across two or more frames of the sequence of frames, wherein the first computing hardware configured with software is capable of maintaining the light map by:
• selecting a portion of the light map;
• and
• updating existing values of the selected portion of the light map;
• and
• second computing hardware configured with software capable of rendering a frame in the sequence of frames using the maintained light map.

An apparatus for rendering a sequence of frames, the apparatus comprising:

• means for characterizing illumination in a 3-D scene to identify regions that have low variation among samples taken within multiple frames and to identify regions that have relatively high variation among samples taken within multiple frames, and
• means for selecting regions that have relatively high variation among samples taken within multiple frames for updating a light map;
• and
• computing hardware configured with software capable of storing a characterization of illumination and capable of rendering a frame in the multiple frames using the updated light map.