If according to the manual...

[Harutium]

If according to the manual...":Irradiance map + light map; probably the best quality/speed ratio." why torturing us with all the other combinations ?
Why not going on perfectioning this method and simplify everybody's lives eliminating the others?
Are the Vray users continuous program testers or should be given with some quick production tool?

[losbellos]

if u think a little more on it you will see, for example imap,lightmap,photonmap, can never make a quality of direct computation.
whatever you make the difference is obvious.

Imap,lightmap is not view independable as photon map.
etc.

[Harutium]

Excuse me, but I do not understand your post!

[Gijs]

Why do you bother? Suppose that you have a scene with photonmaps and you need to render a few more shots, you wouldn't be happy that it doesn't exist anymore would you?
Furthermore, now I think of it, that's probably the most important reason to keep photonmapping: for scenes that you do not know in advance how the animation will be. In that case, I can imagine that photonmapping is faster then lightmapping.

[Harutium]

Excuse me if I bothered you Mr. Van Nisterooy!

[Gijs]

I mean't 'why does it bother you', sorry for that...that's the risk of not writing in my native language I guess.
But what do you think of my explaination?

[natty]

i totaly agree with Gijs.. why would you restrict yourself two only one gi solution? when you can use 2 and make the gi faster and cleaner!

[Harutium]

I do not understand your unswers: If the creators of the program say:"this is the best quality/speed ratio"
Why complicating us with all the rest?

[dbuchhofer]

Because there are cases where its not the best.

Because its useful for backward compatibility.

Because different people prefer to work in different ways.

[Syclone1]

how come there is a dozen different ways to create a cube in max?

-dave

[Gijs]

there are cases where it is not the best.

Would be nice if Vray could analyse the scene and advise the best option for us

But even if Lightmap proves to be the best solution in all cases, the other methods should be left for compatibility and for those who will still like to be using it out of habit/workflow.

[Geddart]

Every GI Method in Vray has it's reasons for existance.

I have a testscene here that is actually faster with photon mapping than with lightmapping. The reason for this is that the lightmap does not give you an adjustable number of lightbounces. Instead Vray tries to solve as much Energy as possible - until the changes between the bounces fall under a certain threshold, meaning you always get a very good and "bouncy" result. However - this wonderful fact can be a curse in some Scenes. When there is a lot energy in the Scene, especially in interiors - the lightmap get's slower and slower because more and more bounces are needed to finish all the energy. This only happens if large portions of the Scene are overbringt though and is no problem in 98% of the scenes.

We also have to keep in mind that the Photon Map is view independant - you compute it once and you can freely change your perspective - you don't have to calculate the GI Solution again.
This is not the case with the Lightmap. You can cover large Portions of your scene with a Lightmap Solution but it's always linked to a camera path. It's view dependant.

So if you don't know photon mapping yet, use the time until 1.5 appears to get into it. There are some Cases where you still can use it! (Normal/New Users will certainly just use Lightmapping because it's so much fun and so fast in most Cases)

[C00PER]

loool. Now peope start asking to remove features instead of adding )))