Sample Rate by bitmap mask?

[Art48]

Hey,

I remembered seeing a feature request quite a while ago about object- or shaderbased sampling rate settings (such as renderman has) and I think someone said it is on a todo list but difficult to implement in max?
Anyways, what about the same principles as the newly introduced rendermasks, but for sampling rates? (By the way, I LOVE the rendermasks).
Maybe I can draw some kind of heatmap where I say I want this region sampled more than another one.
I thought of this since I'm currently rendering an image which takes VERY long to render despite all tweaks I could imagine (practically an ice scene, more or less purely refracted/reflected surfaces) and I know that later in postproduction a certain area of my image is gonna be out of focus anyways, it would be nice to be able to tell the renderer to sample those areas less than the later in-focus areas, via a mask.

[joconnell]

Hmm, I wonder how this'd work in the context of a raytracer. Say for example your final image is going to be out of focus on the left, sharp on the right so you use less samples on the left. What if the right side is reflecting the lower sampled objects on the left? It'd surely be showing the dirtier shading of those objects and might miss the objective?

Actually thinking of it, would this be something that might suit better with the progressive renderer then?

[Art48]

Yeah you're right about the reflection qualities, interesting. What I rather meant though are the image samples, not the DMC ones. Anyways, I'm sure it would be possible to override the mask if a certain noise threshold isnt met when the sample comes from a low-sampled area of the image.
It would be really cool if its in the normal bucket renderer though since I think it's more reliable for complex production quality renders. I use the progressive pretty much only for fast previews and I love it.

[vlado]

This is still on the "to do" list, but sadly we haven't gotten round to it yet. Will get there.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Vizioen]

Maybe a zdepth pass calculated prior to the rendering can control the sampling?

[Art48]

This is still on the "to do" list, but sadly we haven't gotten round to it yet. Will get there.

Best regards,
Vlado

Good to hear! I hope this is high on top on your priority list since I think it would be a tremendous addition to be able to control sample rates to a finer degree!

About the ZDepth, it could be an option, too.

[vlado]

Good to hear! I hope this is high on top on your priority list since I think it would be a tremendous addition to be able to control sample rates to a finer degree!

Or more likely give users another option to shoot themselves in the foot

Best regards,
Vlado

[Art48]

Or more likely give users another option to shoot themselves in the foot

Best regards,
Vlado

Until someone comes along with a script to visualize which shaders/objects got sampling rate overrides, and the ability to reset them. Only, of course, if you don't have implemented such a list by then

Apart from that you introduced the Beginner/Advanced/Expoert tabs for the render settings, I'm sure that using overrides won't be available in the Beginner tab