Glass in animations

[andyp7]

Hey,

Little bit of confusion in our office on the subject of glass. When doing animations I hide the glass when calculating the light cache because I find it sometimes causes problems. I have noticed no ill-effects from this, however my collegue suggested that I should also hide the glass for the irradiance map calculation. I assumed that the glass would be effecting the shadows and perhaps even illumination in some parts so I leave it in.

Who is right?

btw: sometimes we do glass as a seperate pass but im lazy most of the time.

[joconnell]

Maybe it might be a better idea to turn off the glass from GI rather than hide it - It seems kind of odd to reason that you'd leave the glass in for the irmap since it affects shadows and illumination but turn it off for lightcache (which by your reasoning for the irmap should be left on)

[andyp7]

ok cool, the only reason I turn it off for lcache in animations is that I have had big slowdowns with the glass and whenever its hidden the render is fine.

thanks for your help

[peakyfreak80]

Depending on the amount of glass I have in a scene, I will turn it off to GI. You don't need to hide it, but the drawback (or perk) is that it will calculate the GI on anything it reflects, even if it is never seen in you scene. It is also an easy way of getting light through windows without worrying about refractive caustics.

peakyfreak