rQMC settings while doing LC flythrough

[highpoly]

just wondering how much rQMC settings affect the LC calcs, and for that matter when calculating an IR map. There is no mention of the rQMC settings during the LC map calc in the camera animation tutorial. Does that mean it has no effect?

thanks

[highpoly]

should i use the same rQMC settings during the IR and LC map calc phase as the ones used during actual rendering? can they be different during the different phases of the cam animation process? I've read the manual and cant seem to find this info.....

any help? anyone?

[ShaunDon]

The rQMC setting has no effect on the lightcache, though it does affect the quality of samples that the irradiance map takes. On most of my animations, I set the noise threshold on the QMC lower while calculating an incremental irradiance, and then raise it again for the final render. Gets you much cleaner GI.

Shaun

[highpoly]

Thanks Shaun,

just to clarify, when you say you set the threshold lower, you mean lower the number or the lower the quality (like 0.005 for IR calc, 0.002 for render....or vice versa?)

I have been leaving AA at fixed/1 for both LC and IR calcs. For LC, i leave rQMC at defaults, and for IR calc make it something like 0.85/0.005/16/2 and for final render raise it (quality) to 0.85/0.002/16/8, or something like that, depending on the scene. I guess it should it be reversed? Higher quality settings during IR calc than during render, huh?

[ShaunDon]

I only ever tweak the adaptive amount and noise threshold in the rQMC, and typically I'd set my irradiance pass to 0.6 adaptive, 0.005 noise threshold, and then for the actual render set adaptive to 1.0 and noise to 0.01, or even higher depending on the scene. It forces a really good irradiance pass, which you don't have to calculate every frame and incrementally the frames calculate pretty fast anyway.

Shaun

[highpoly]

got it....i'll give those settings a spin around the block

I'm guessing your vray lights are being stored in the IR map to take advantage of those high settings? plus raising the adaptive amount to 1 and raising the threshold would give you a ton of noise at render time if they werent stored, I'd imagine...