Depth Controlled Sample Quality

[joelly3d]

I was thinking that it might be interesting, as a way to optimize speed, to have something like a camera depth based sample range. Currently, the min and max samples in the VRay render globals are more or less absolute when working with the universal method. I was thinking, we could probably save a lot of sample time by reducing the Min and Max Subdivs in the Adaptive Image Sampler by method of camera focus distance, so that too far/near samples can be reduced when x-distance from the focal plane since they'll be blurred in post anyway.

Is this possible?

[joconnell]

Hmm.

It might work if you're blurring as you say but the issue with less samples further away is that smaller objects have less chance of being hit by the initial camera rays, so less total camera rays being averaged to make the final pixel might lead to more shimmering / juddering effects happening on the silhouette of those far away parts. Perhaps it might make more sense for material and shading rays as vlado mentioned that adaptive DMC aa rays are quite cheap in terms of the overall render overhead. The less pixels something takes up, the less time it'll spend rendering either way so you might be better off even trying to optimize your scene for reflection and refraction bounces based on distance to camera instead, once you don't have to do a fly through where the camera travels from foreground to background.