Irradiance map and animation

[cristoforo]

Which is better to use with a fly-through animation, MULTIFRAME INCREMENTAL or INCREMENTAL ADD TO CURRENT MAP? The tutorial on-line says to use MULTIFRAME INCREMENTAL. When should you use one or the other?

[cristoforo]

I really do not understand either the difference between SINGLE FRAME and BUCKET MODE. In the help files I read that MULTIFRAME INCREMENTAL can be used with network rendering.....meaning backburner and not DR? So, if I want to calculate the Irradiance map for every frame in an animation, then I need to use MULTIFRAME INCREMENTAL instead of SINGLE FRAME?

[DanielBrew]

Hi Cristoforo,

To answer your first question, as I understand it, 'multiframe incremental' and 'incremental add to current map' are the same apart from 'multiframe incremental' clears the memory of any cached irradience map first. Whereas, 'incremental add to current map' doesn't clear the memory it simply adds to the current map in memory.

Your second question, I'm not absolutely sure with this one. I think the difference between single frame and bucket mode is how the irradience map is calculated. With single frame, Vray calculates the irradience map for the whole frame, pass by pass.
With bucket mode it treats each bucket a single frame, calculating all the passes bucket by bucket. This allows you to use DR to calculate the irradience map.

Hope that's clearer,

Dan

[Austin]

So, if I want to calculate the Irradiance map for every frame in an animation, then I need to use MULTIFRAME INCREMENTAL instead of SINGLE FRAME?

If there's nothing moving in your scene then it's not necessary to use single frame (as that would calculate the IRmap and dump the previous IRmap every frame). You'd want to use one of the incremental modes and calculate an IRmap every so many frames (generally between 5 and 15 frames, depending on the speed of your walkthru).