Irradiance map deprecation

[konstantin_chaos]

Hello everyone,

We'd like to address the status of the Irradiance Map global illumination engine within V-Ray.
This engine is complex to configure, and its compatibility with newer features and optimisations in V-Ray is limited.

The process of phasing out this feature as part of our ongoing development efforts has already begun, and we are considering its complete removal in the future.
As V-Ray evolves, we're focusing on advancements that do not align well with the Irradiance Map.

With that said, we're opening this discussion to understand if any of you are actively using the Irradiance Map in V-Ray 6 or later versions.
We're particularly interested in hearing your reasons for doing so.

Your feedback will help us make informed decisions.

Thank you for your input,
Konstantin

[Micha]

I don't used IM since a few years, since I switched to GPU rendering .... and I don't miss the splotchy GI look.

But I miss new methods of under sampling, most for high res images. For example the Nvidia upscale is for me not the right way. Better would be if only GI lighting/shadows and blurry reflections/refractions would be calculated at half res, but not the geometry edges.

[alejandro_suavita]

This seems like a bad idea. Why this feature is discontinued while being by far the fastest rendering option is mind blowing. Even rendering Irradiance Map and Light Cache for each frames is in some cases tens of times faster than Brute Force with Light Cache. I understand and appreciate the interest in having a resource intensive accurate solution but this is just too costly in terms of time and money (chaos cloud credits).

I had to turn to Irradiance Map for a particular scene where I just need to render a functional draft of an HD animation. I was able to cut render times to about 20 seconds per frame from 2 minutes per frame.

We are encouraged to use Brute Force instead just because the Denoising got better. Disappointing.