I was under the impression that if you increase the Subdivs Mult in the DMC Sampler then it will increase all Subdiv properties globally.
Now I made a test file and rendered with the Mult at 1.0 and then at 5.0 - there is an improvement in the quality of a glossy material I am testing but if I reset back to 1.0 and go into the material and change the Subdiv from 8 to 40 (5x) then the quality is much higher. Shouldn’t this just be a numbers game and get the same result?
I wonder if the material subdivision is specific to glossy reflection, whereas the global dmc doesn’t affect glossy quality. Which parameters are you changing (screengrab of your settings?)
Chaos Guys: Where’s Fernando these days, he would know?
Hi Valero
The Global subdivs Multiplier, basically multiply all the subdivision in the scene with the exception of LC, Photon map, caustics and anti-aliasing subdivision. So everything else is affected by this option (glossy reflection/refraction, lights subdivs, Irr Map, Brute Force, area shadows, etc.)
Let said that you have a material with glossy reflection of 8 and the Global subdivs Mult is set to 1 ( the default setting for both). The actual samples for the gloss reflection is the square of that number.
So we have this:
Example 1
Glossy reflection = 8 --> 8 x 8 = 64 samples
Global Subdivs = 1
Total samples = 64 x 1 = 64
Example 2
Glossy reflection = 16 --> 16 x 16 = 256 samples
Global Subdivs = 4
Total samples = 256 x 4 = 1024
Example 3
Glossy reflection = 8 --> 8 x 8 = 64 samples
Global Subdivs = 16
Total samples = 64 x 16 = 1024
Notice that the Example 2 and 3 should produce the same result in the glossy reflection.
I hope this can help.
Fernando
Always can count on you Fernando. Yes, this answers my question perfectly. So by using 8 and a global subdiv of 5 I was actually getting 320 samples. But when I used 40 and then global subdiv of 1 I was getting 1600 samples. I did not realize the multiplier worked this way. Thanks so much!