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Stochastic Sampling

Stochastic Sampling involves collecting data or points randomly, rather than at fixed regular intervals. This leads to varied results even with identical inputs due to the inherent randomness of the sampling. This technique improves anti-aliasing by randomly sampling pixels instead of normally. A simple example of Stochastic Sampling can be visualized on this webpage .

This section houses the global settings for Stochastic Sampling. To use it, select it as a UV option in supported sections of the shader.

Sampling Mode​

  • Type: Dropdown, Options: Deliot Heitz/Hextile/Off

Choice of which Sampling Mode to use, both of which are vastly significant in appearance. This will determine what settings are exposed below.

Deliot Heitz​

Referring to the method from Thomas Deliot and Éric Heitz , this method takes a tileable texture and preprocesses it to produce two textures - A transform of the input that redistributes colors so that blending operations preserve contrast, and an inverse transform to map back to after blending. When rendering, each fragment is mapped into a lattice structure of tiles, but the tiles are assigned randomized offsets. Multiple samples are fetched from neighboring tiles, then blended using weights that factor in position, randomness, etc. After blending, the inverse transform restores correct color statistics, reducing visible repetition.

Detiling Density​

  • Type: Float, Range: 0.1 - 10.0

How dense should the Deliot-Heitz detiling should be.

Hextile​

Hextile refers to a slightly different approach to Stochastic Sampling by using hexagonal regions and tiles instead of square or rectangular tiles. It partitions the texture domain using a regular lattice of hexagonal-shaped regions and has a random offset. For each given UV or pixel, it determines which hex tile region it belongs to, sample from the relevant neighboring tiles, and blend it using barycentric weights.

Hex Grid Density​

  • Type: Float, Range: 0.1 - 10.0

Sets the density of the hexagonal grid, higher numbers being more dense.

Rotation Strength​

  • Type: Float, Range: 0.0 - 2.0

Sets the rotation strength of each tile.

Falloff Contrast​

  • Type: Float, Range: 0.01 - 0.99

Sets the falloff contrast of the Hextile sampling.

Falloff Power​

  • Type: Float, Range: 0.0 - 20.0

Sets the falloff power of the Hextile sampling.

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