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Author Topic: Light Settings-Max Rays  (Read 10631 times)

Tanzim

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Light Settings-Max Rays
« on: March 26, 2008, 04:33:30 am »

I don't know about anyone else but i don't think anim8or allows you set the amount of rays to be sent by a light source
i remember one render saying total rays were ~6,000,000, and there was only one light source
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CobraSpectre

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Re: Light Settings-Max Rays
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2008, 09:11:08 am »

The number of rays is based primarily on image size, samples and use of raytraced materials.

An image with no raytraced materials has a number of rays which is:
length X width X number of samples

In my tests, raytraced reflective materials use about twice as many rays. While the dielectric test example uses 20 times as many rays.
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Tanzim

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Re: Light Settings-Max Rays
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2008, 05:32:33 am »

I see, but still think we should be allowed to choose the amount of rays to be sent (I'm not trying to be stubborn or anything)
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Steve

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Re: Light Settings-Max Rays
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2008, 03:19:09 pm »

You can choose the number.  It is controlled indirectly by the aa setting.

Each ray intersection sends a ray to each light to see if it's visible.  If you has 1 million pixels and 16 samples per pixel they you will get at most 16 million smaples per light assuming no reflections or transparency.  The background doesn't need to sample the light so it could be fewer.

BTW if what you want is to take more samples per light for each ray intersection instead of just one, it's better, say, double the number of samples per pixel at the start than to quadruple the ligt samples but not increase the samples per pixel.
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Tanzim

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Re: Light Settings-Max Rays
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2008, 01:41:42 am »

Guess i was wrong. thanks for the help, really appreciate it
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