A method, system, and computer-readable storage medium are disclosed for adaptive sampling guided by multilateral filtering. A plurality of versions of a first image are generated. Each of the plurality of versions of the first image has a respective different resolution. A respective priority map is generated for each of the plurality of versions of the first image. Each respective priority map identifies a plurality of high-priority regions in a corresponding one of the plurality of versions of the first image. A second image is rendered based on the priority maps. The rendering comprises performing a ray-tracing process having a greater number of samples per pixel for the high-priority regions of the second image than for other regions of the second image.