2.29: radiosity render!

[macke]

You propose to use what is called 'shadowmaps' in game engines.

Ah yes, that's a proper name! The technique works well and gives nice results indeed. However, what it all comes down to imo is the filtering.

The Yafray team worked on a raytrace approach (photons) for the same effect, which gives far superior results, with as obvious 'con' a rendertime issue. We work with them to have Yafray working smoothly with Blender.

Photon mapping is very interesting, and can be very fast as well. Imo, for most effects all you need is a good filtering method to produce smooth results with few samples, at the expense of accuracy. However, accuracy can be traded off quite easily I think. Furthermore, you can implement irradiance caching to further speed up the results.

[JA-forreal]

I haven't really made use of Blender radiosity tools in my work. And now with the new radiosity engine I am attracted to the Fast GI solution and want to add it to my style of 3d rendering in Blender. Ok. As far as the rendered radiosity, can the effect be blended onto the object with materials and uv textures with an overlay or mix function? I have not seen any verified docs on the new radiosity system. There have been references made to applying the basic principles of Blenders standard radiosity system omitting the collection of meshes and jumping straight to the render. I have not yet gotten the results that nearly match some of the example files that I have seen. I am an advanced Blender user but this new process I'm not getting. Thanks for your help.

[JA-forreal]

Ok,ok, Blender heads. Heres the deal with the new Radiosity features:

1- setup your scene as such-
The object that will emit light to all of the other objects (the light source)does not need to be subdivided in edit mode.

For each object that will recieve light enter editmode and subdivide your meshes as follows-
-for deeper shadows subdivide with the -W- key to a higher degree.

I subdivided the target objects only twice.

I subdivided the floor object at least 4 times.

(***Make sure that the normals in the light source mesh point to the objects that are to be illuminated and that all of the other scene objects normals are pointing outward!)

-Exit edit mode and set up your materials as such-

-For the Light object -
set radio on
Emit on, as high as you need. The higher the brighter
Ambient controls the amount of radiosity color, I set it to 500

-For the target objects-
Set radio on
Emit on -low .004
Ambient to 486

-For floor object-
Set radio on
Emit on -low .004
Ambient to 284

-Go to the Radiosity edit buttons and set Max iterations to 25 and Mult to 36, that's it!

Go to Render buttons and select Radio and render away!

It works for me!

Here is my test render-

http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/ ... php?id=259

I only used a lamp and a shadow only spot for the additional directional light sources. The fast new GI effects are super great!

Here is the Blender render without the radiosity feature enabled.

http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/ ... php?id=257

[JA-forreal]

Well Ton, you broke this one off. Here are my test again with the new Blender radiosity features.-

The "Final Render" test.-

http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/ ... php?id=259

A render with some of the textures removed to reveal the radiosity
solution at work.-


http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/ ... php?id=258

Ton and the other Blender developers are gifted. Whoa, and to think of what's next for this process in Blender. I joined the right team for sure.

[JA-forreal]

If this rendering feature could be applied to the subdivision surface cage alone for the radiosity solution, another big Whoa to that setup!

Correction- It appears that the radiosity feature works with SubSurfs!

[JA-forreal]

Ton, will the new fast radiosity rendering features be available in the upcoming Blender game engine?