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#raytracing folks, what do you think of next event estimation vs simple MIS (generate either brdf sample or light sample, use total probability in MC estimator)?
My former student insists on NEE, but it has so many special cases that I doubt it's a good idea pedagogically.
@lisyarus I’ve pondered this as well (also, I assume you mean NEE: using emitter and bsdf MIS for shadow rays dangling off the trunk of the path vs. “simple MIS”: pure recursive trunk path sampled from the average of emitter and bsdf strategies at each bounce, which I call mixture sampling). for direct illumination they are essentially equivalent. For multi-bounce, you can find cases where one is better and vice versa. Mixture sampling can, however, cause the path pdf to deviate arbitrarily from the path contribution for long paths.