Wish: Adaptive Dome light mode for standard environment

[Micha]

Hi,

could it be possible to enable a dome light mode and adaptive mode for the standard environment options?

-Micha

[konstantin_chaos]

This is an interesting request.
I've recognized that environments in V-Ray is not a trivial thing for our users to fully understand and manage.
The main reason - there are 2 ways to setup the scene environment - the standard environment texture slots and the Dome light.
On top of that the two can be combined in some situations.
Because of that we are looking into ways to simplify the workflow as a whole.

Back to the original question:
The main difference between the Dome light source and the environment maps (the GI Environment in particular) is that the Dome emits direct light.
If the standard environment is used to illuminate the scene instead it's indirectly sampled by the GI engine.
The Adaptive calculations can only be applied to direct light tracing (light/shadow rays) - the Dome light.

Konstantin

[savage309]

I really believe that that should not be "environment" and "dome light". Adaptive dome light is better in cases and there should not be other options imho.

Best,
Blago.

[Micha]

konstantin_chaos My idea was that the environments could be switched to adaptive dome light mode by a little flag option without the need to add a dome light to the scene.

savage309 I like both ways and I wouldn't remove the environments. Also I run in cases where the adaptive dome light doesn't helped for faster render times and added a light noise.

[savage309]

Those cases should be considered bugs (they are fixable). I don't see any advantages of the environment compared to ADL.

Best,
Blago.

[Micha]

savage309
ADL: I tested an air plane interior - a large space with small windows - and got not speed increase. I tested a train interior - a lot of large windows, simple GI sampling - speed wasn't better and I got some additional noise. Maybe the large plastic surfaces hides the advantages of ADL.

[savage309]