[Bf-cycles] Distance Culling of Lamps?

Sergey Sharybin sergey.vfx at gmail.com
Wed Feb 4 21:58:50 CET 2015


Well, i would like to switch it from pdf check to energy check first. Just
need a bit of time for that.

But be aware it also depends on the lamps setup. For example if they all
are close to your object that patch wouldn't reduce any noise.

I didn't look into that particular work in details, but looked into
lightcuts. That would be interesting to play with at least and see how it
goes.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 9:31 PM, Marco G <marco.gzt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Couldn't D832 be merged into master if we're in Bcon2? I'm currently
> working on scenes with several lamps which could benefit.
> Would this patch help "many light" scenes? Right now is the worst scenario
> i encounter with Cycles.
> As soon as i add 15+ lamps, rendertimes and noise go skyrocket, even if
> they're set to 0-1 bounce and are same datablock.
> I suppose it's high priority for Gooseberry too?
>
> BTW has some experiment been made with this method by Cessen? ->
> http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-cycles/2014-June/002021.html
>
> Regards,
> MG
>
>
> 2015-02-04 8:56 GMT+01:00 Sergey Sharybin <sergey.vfx at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Don't really think distance-based culling for lamps is the way to go.
>> Lamp might be really far away but contribute reasonable amount of light
>> still. Also, for sub culling would not work at all :)
>>
>> What's more interesting IMO is ignoring light which does not contribute
>> much energy. I had WIP patch in the patch tracker for that which needs some
>> tweaks: currently it operates with PDF which is not totally correct, it
>> should evaluate lamp energy (which is relatively cheap) and skip BSDF
>> evaluation if energy is lower than a given threshold.
>>
>> That would give nice consistent optimization i think, which should also
>> tend to be less flickery in animations.
>>
>> Link to the patch for those who're interested:
>> https://developer.blender.org/D832
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:22 AM, Matthew Heimlich <matt.heimlich at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> This is already done to a certain extent by cycles automatically.
>>> On Feb 3, 2015 4:19 PM, "Zauber Paracelsus" <zauber at gridmail.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Would it be possible, through a new lamp setting, to support
>>>> distance-based culling of lamps?  The basic idea is that lamps would not
>>>> be sampled if they are far enough away from the area being sampled,
>>>> thereby cutting down on rendering time.
>>>>
>>>> This can already be done to a degree by using nodes via the Ray Length
>>>> output of the Light Path node, and I find that in complex scenes with
>>>> numerous surfaces and several lamps over a large area, it can reduce
>>>> rendering times by roughly half.
>>>>
>>>> However, there are two flaws with this approach:
>>>> 1) Ray Length only measures the length of the current ray, meaning it
>>>> could still be sampled despite being a greater distance away.
>>>> 2) Ray Length is supplied after a bounce is calculated (I think),
>>>> meaning it would not be fully sufficient to stop the lamp from being
>>>> sampled.
>>>>
>>>> If distance culling for lamps is supported directly within blender,
>>>> however, then it would perhaps unlock larger performance gains because
>>>> it would stop the lamp from being sampled before any bounces are
>>>> calculated.
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> Bf-cycles at blender.org
>>>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles
>>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
>>
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>>
>
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>


-- 
With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
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