In this section a hybrid two-pass algorithm is introduced that has been proposed by Lafortune which does not need mesh generation either [LW93]. This method is based on the bi-directional particle tracing since particles are shot at the same time from a selected light source and the viewpoint. After this, shadow rays are used to connect each intersection point in the light path with each intersection point in the eye path, and contributions are added to the flux of the relevant pixel.
Random walks can be written as:
for the light path, where 
is the
point seen by point 
along direction 
, and
for the eye path, where 
is the
point that sees point 
along direction 
.
The direction 
in the light path is sampled
according to the subcritical pdf (spdf):
where 
is the bi-directional reflection
distribution function (BRDF). The direction in the
eye path is sampled the same way:
After generating a light path and an eye path all intersection points are linked by shadow rays. The flux is estimated by a weighted sum:
where factors 
express the estimates of the flux found by i reflections
on the eye path and j reflections on the eye path. These factors are
evaluated differently according to the following three cases:
This term is an estimate for the flux received
from a light source that is directly seen through the pixel under consideration.
This term is an estimate for the flux that reaches the
eye from the light source through the eye path, as in classical path tracing.
This term is an estimate for the flux that reaches the
eye from the light source, trough i reflections on the light path and j
reflections on the eye path.
There are various alternatives to choose the weights 
for the
contributions . For example the classical path tracing is the special
case of this generic algorithm using the following weights:
