Importance Sampling for HDRI glossy reflections

[Midiaeffects]

This is one of the things I miss the most in Vray. I mean, it's great in almost every aspect of it. However, glossy reflective objets with HDRI, vray still struggles to achieve a noise free render.

I wonder if it's possible to use for reflections and refractions the same wonderful technique of importance sampling dome lights use when HDR images are used as textures. Or a more fake technique like mental rays's mia_env_blur shader, that just blur the image according to the glossiness setting of the Arch & Design material.

I love to use HDR images in Vray, with this feature would be completely kick ass...

Regards,
Jr.

[instinct]

Well you can of course simply blur the image hehe. On a more serious note there is Interpolation for glossies providing a means to undersample and still smooth the reflections out. In addition there is importance sampling due to the DMC sampler i'd guess.

Spherical Harmonics are there in maya and might come to Max i think ?

Regards,
Thorsten

[vlado]

I wonder if it's possible to use for reflections and refractions the same wonderful technique of importance sampling dome lights use when HDR images are used as textures.

V-Ray already does this when you use the dome light; I'm afraid this is almost as good as it gets without fakes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Midiaeffects]

Thanks a lot for the answer Vlado! Interesting to know that Vray already do that. After comparing environment and dome light, I can clearly see the difference. However, even though it's a big improvement, sometimes it's still difficult to get rid of reflection noise. Maybe consider implementing fake method in the lines of mia_env_blur...

Regards,
Jr.