The evaluation of material networks is a relatively resource-intensive process in the rendering pipeline. Modern production scenes can contain hundreds or thousands of complex materials with massive networks, so there is a great demand for an efficient way of handling material networks. In this paper, we introduce an efficient method for progressively caching the material nodes without an overhead on the rendering performance. We evaluate the material networks as usual in the rendering process. Then, the output value of part of the network is stored in a cache and can be used in the evaluation of the next materials. Using our method, we can render the scene with performance equal to or better than that of the method without caching, with a slight difference in the images rendered with caching and without it.

翻译：材质网络的计算是渲染管线中相对消耗资源的过程。现代生产场景可能包含数百甚至数千种具有庞大网络的复杂材质，因此亟需一种高效的材质网络处理方式。本文提出了一种高效的渐进式缓存方法，可在不影响渲染性能的前提下对材质节点进行缓存。在渲染过程中，我们按常规流程评估材质网络，然后将部分网络的输出值存入缓存，供后续材质评估时复用。采用本方法后，渲染场景的性能至少与未使用缓存的方法相当，且使用缓存与未使用缓存渲染的图像仅存在细微差异。