2.49 new directlighting GI options preview

[radiance]

Hi all,

Here's a sneek peak at the new 2.49 release coming very soon,
and it's new GI options to the directlighting integrator.

* none
Nothing, eg only direct lighting from area lights is included. the rest of the image areas receive no contribution and will be black

* ambient
Use a simple ambient colour term. (top colour of the environment)

* sample environment
Use a simple ambient colour term, corresponding with the environment/horizon.
Together with ambient and none, these modes are all very fast, as no montecarlo (sampling) is required.
These give a very unrealistic, classic z-buffer/whitted raytracing style look, but are very fast, and very handy for interactive tuning of complex scenes or on slow hardware.

* ambient occlusion
Ambient occlusion as before.

* diffuse
Indirect diffuse, with a configuration to set the number of indirect diffuse bounces to include.
This gives a GI quality that is in between direct/AO and pathtracing, without caustics and a decent realistic quality (much better than AO), but much faster than pathtracing/PMC, very good for quick finals and animations. It is similar in some ways to 'bruteforce' indirect GI in engines like Vray.

The render attached was rendered in 25 minutes, at high res, with the 'diffuse' mode with 5 'diffuse' mode bounces and 2 glossy bounces.
It looks much better than ambient occlusion, yet renders much faster and without caustics/fireflies.

Radiance

[tchoa]

Nice addition to the engine.
These modes are for sure very usefull.
Great!

[tonycho]

wow 25 Minutes
very nice

yup very useful

[kubo]

arfffff you might have saved my ass with this nice addition!!!!, mmmm you guys want to marry me? (I'll have to ask my girl if she doesn't mind, but I'm sure we can accomodate )
When you think that octane can't be any awesomer, you come and prove us wrong!

[Proupin]

Nice addition, thanks RS

[radiance]

here's another test, 1920x1080, look at the render time
2 glossy and 5 diffuse bounces on one GTX580.

Radiance

[mirobimbo]

This is, I've been waiting for.
I love directlight, I love speed.

[pixelrush]

very nice!
looking forward to testing it out.

[vipvip]

excellent, thank you !
Do you plan to totally remove the internet connection for the 2.5/final?

[matej]

More flexibility & power... Thanks!!!