Question for Dalomar, no GI rendering

[Free Agent_cg]

ok this might be stupid... ive been playing with techniques for masking, my question is if i turn off GI in the "Indirect illumination" tab and reflection/refraction in Global switches and all those map tabs, and remove all VFB channel except for diffuse, will the render pick up anything other than diffuse?... the reason i ask is because i know if u have a reflection on a flat color a diffuse render will still pick up a tone and would render different than if it didnt have reflection.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Question for Dalomar, no GI rendering

I guess at the heart of what you're asking is whether a diffuse channel rendered normally will differ from the diffuse channel when rendered without GI and Reflection. To be completely honest I'm don't think it will. Each of the channels have a specific purpose, with most of them being as a component of a mathematical equation (with images) that when solved leads to the visual result that we see. Part of that equation is as follows...

...(diffuse * raw lighting) + (diffuse * raw GI)...

So based on that part of the equation, we can see that the diffuse channel must be constant whether GI is active or not.

Also, the part of that compositing equation that deals with reflections says that they are added to the final result. Although there may be some sort of darkening of the amount of light or GI that is received by the surface due to the amount of reflection, this again does not affect the diffuse component.

I'm not really sure what you're looking to do, but honestly, I don't think the key lies in the diffuse channel. As I said, most of the channels themselves are simply different parts of that equation that only really make sense when they come together. I'm not sure if this helps or hurts for masking, but since I don't know what you're looking to extract I can't make any recommendation on how to proceed. A further explanation on what you're looking to accomplish would be helpful. If you're looking to get more info on channels, I'd suggest you take a look at the link below.

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150S...erelements.htm