Bake shadows into a file (not irradiance map), .vrshd ?

[bigbossfr]

Hi,

Currently, when we have static scene, there is not way to bake the shadows without to lose all lights render elements (light select, lighting render element, matte shadow...), because the light "information" is injected into the GI.

Do you think it is possible to have something to bake shadows without to lose all of this ?

Something like :
- bake per light. Each light could save all shadows information into a file (myLight.vrshd)
- have a option on light for specular/reflection : ignore back faces/ignore occluded (like projection node) or, specular/reflection will use the baked file to know where the light can create specular/reflection.

With this, we can bake all shadows (in final, i want 0 shadow rays), continue to use specular and reflection of lights, and continue to have all "lighting" render elements.

Thanks.

[vlado]

It can probably be done, although I'm not sure how that would work with area shadows and area speculars...

Best regards,
Vlado

[bigbossfr]

I don't understand...Area shadows and specular are different from another lights ?

I think the "power" of Vray is to give the possibility to bake what we want (Arnold can't, and Renderman was used a lot for this).

If Vray can bake the "lights" (so, the shadows and something to keep specular/reflection working with ignore back faces/ignore occluded), GI (it is done), SSS (done (?)), stereoscopy (shademap, done), geometry (done with proxy, i hope we will have optimization dependent of the distance soon), we will have the ultimate raytrace render engine !