Indigo 0.8 stable

[suvakas]

Interesting that fry is seeing such speedups from exit portals.. might have to give them a try

Yeah, why not ?
Anyway.. for me the general idea seems to be same as invisible meshlights. Except that the portal doesn't emit light directly, but gets it's power from sun/skylight.
I think, that emitter with null material can also let the outside environment to be visible as well.

[OnoSendai]

Well, the general idea AFAIK is to choose a 2d region, volume, or surface, to sample more often than usual. In this way rays will tend to go through the portal more often.

[suvakas]

Yes, i get that.

But..if there is an emitter in the scene, then how are the rays traced? They are traced from the emitter towards cam or vice versa? Isn't the emitter like a "portal" already?

[OnoSendai]

Well, it depends if we're talking bidirectional or normal path tracing

[suvakas]

lol
Gotcha !

But still.. how hard it would be to make a meshlight invisible? I mean how hard it would be to code? Or what do you generally think about it? Is it a bad idea? Cause i probalby don't know much about what i'm really talking about here... I'm just used to do it in vray and i can also see the speed difference when rendering with Indigo using emitters instead of the sun.

[OnoSendai]

Emitters can't really be invisible in Indigo. Emitters are basically objects with a non-zero emitted radiance and zero albedo (don't reflect light).
So they block all light rays.

[suvakas]

I see. Ok. I'll let it rest then

[naxos]

i'm not high-level in dev. but my 2 cents are :

exit portals are not simply a way to block rays from going out the scene and so they are ignored instead of being rendered running to the infinite sky ?

cheers

[filippo]

this version work very well!!!
thaks

[CTZn]

Mmm, unlike suvakas I'm insisting on invisible lights, sorry for that

Can't meshes be used to define a zone in space (a volume) where rays are shot from a random point within that volume, toward a random direction ?

I understand that meshlights are actually defining a surface, and their normal to the surface is the direction the rays follow (+they block light), a perfect way to define black bodies I guess.

Now for plasma based light sources, like neons and fire and jets, the actual model of meshlights is not suitable. I don't know how many applications for such lights can be found, but a new light type is something for a renderer...

Worth it ?

[OnoSendai]

Volume based light sources would be cool, and are something i might get round to adding some day.

[CTZn]

Wow, no hurry eh !