irmap camera path vs incremental

[pg1]

I render an incremental irmap, every 25th frame over a 100 frame camera path at 50 hemispherical subdivisions.
I end up with 5 irmaps being calculated on frames 0,25,50,75,100, 50 subdivs every time so 50*5=250
Is this the exact same as rendering 1 frame irmap set to use camera path with 250 hemispherical subdivs?

[pg1]

Also is it possible to use the animation prepass animation irmap to generate a save irmap every nth frame which would be merged together using the irmap viewer afterward?
I am trying to figure out a way to get the whole farm to work on an irmap rather than 1 machine doing the irmap calculation while all the rest of the render nodes have to wait.

[tashko.zashev]

I render an incremental irmap, every 25th frame over a 100 frame camera path at 50 hemispherical subdivisions.
I end up with 5 irmaps being calculated on frames 0,25,50,75,100, 50 subdivs every time so 50*5=250
Is this the exact same as rendering 1 frame irmap set to use camera path with 250 hemispherical subdivs?

Yes, it is the same. The Irr map quality should be the same for both approaches, but using the Camera path is the easier way.

Also is it possible to use the animation prepass animation irmap to generate a save irmap every nth frame which would be merged together using the irmap viewer afterward?
I am trying to figure out a way to get the whole farm to work on an irmap rather than 1 machine doing the irmap calculation while all the rest of the render nodes have to wait.

It could be a solution as well. The Irr map frames can be calculated on different machines using the V-Ray Distributed Rendering or start a Backburner job and spread all frames to the render nodes.

[pg1]

Thanks tashko. Now I just need a .bat file to launch the irmap viewer as a backburner dependent job to merge the irmaps at render finish and can use the whole farm. Nice

[pg1]

It would be useful to add an option to the irmap mode called Animation prepass merge that merges irmaps sequences together and then reads from file.
This would make the irmap workflow much quicker.

[tashko.zashev]

Yes, this is something we can improve for our future versions. Now the GI workflow with longer fly though animations are somehow complicated, but still produces very good quality in less time.