Daylight Portals

[Peter Milner]

A bit of testing shows that automatic daylight portals renders a bit faster than selected daylight portals (no idea why).

Also to make things run a bit faster still, create a glass material for your windows with transparency=1.0, IOR=1.0, reflectivity=1.0 and sharpness=1.0 and model the pane of glass as a region or surface tagged as Thin.

No daylight portals - 50 passes - 01:54

Selected daylight portals - 50 passes - 03:45

Automatic portals - 50 passes - 03:33

[Marc Chaumier]

Interesting, Peter. Is it done with packet tracer or path tracer?

[Peter Milner]

Packet tracer.

Daylight portals are disabled under Path Tracer as they have no relevance.

[Marc Chaumier]

Thanks Peter. Do you prefer to work with Packet or Path, and in which conditions?

[Peter Milner]

I prefer the results from the Path Tracer as the lighting is more accurate and shadow areas are  better dealt with.

It also handles complex materials better without slowing down too much.

I use it now for most of our in-house publications.

 

However, I still use the Packet Tracer a lot to turn out quick renderings for clients like this one:

[Marc Chaumier]

Thanks Peter! I think about the same, and I find sometime, that the final result with packet tracer, even less realist, is more attractive (sometime)... I don't know why!... Another point, is the case of reflections. I find they are, sometime, better with the packet tracer; and you can set a background picture. Usefull in outside render, when you have to show an environment in the windows!

[Sampdoria]

Good question! :)