looking at the twitter feed

[René]

The "snow" is clouds...
https://twitter.com/terragen/status/806625957058445312

- Oshyan

I tried that once but I only could get it to work(more or less) on a flat plain. Clouds seem to be ideal for making snow because they have so much in common, unfortunately you can't add specularity to clouds (isn't it?)

[Dune]

You could pop in another cloud layer, lower quality and density and increase the color to 2 or so, you could get some sort of sparkling effect.

[Kadri]

You might also be interested to know that our holiday sale image was rendered using the in-development path tracer. The "snow" is clouds...
https://twitter.com/terragen/status/806625957058445312

- Oshyan

That looks nice. Curious, any chance to see the difference with a render from TG4 without the path tracer Oshyan?

[Hannes]

This is indeed mighty interesting!!!!

[Dune]

You're always in for a treat with Matt at the steering wheel 

[Upon Infinity]

Any substantial difference between path-tracing and ray-tracing?  They sound quite a bit like the same thing.

[bobbystahr]

Any substantial difference between path-tracing and ray-tracing?  They sound quite a bit like the same thing.

found this article online which helps understanding both conceptd
http://home.lagoa.com/2014/04/ray-tracing-vs-path-tracing-in-plain-english/

[Dune]

Interesting, but I hope the path tracing isn't going to slow down a render too much, compared to ray traced renders....

[bobbystahr]

Interesting, but I hope the path tracing isn't going to slow down a render too much, compared to ray traced renders....

My thought eggs ackley

[Matt]

Interesting, but I hope the path tracing isn't going to slow down a render too much, compared to ray traced renders....

One of the key realisations I've had is this: if you're already rendering with very high anti-aliasing, you're already half way towards being able to path trace (brute force GI) without necessarily adding more noise.

Some of the best vegetation renders use AA of 10 or more. At this level you're getting into the territory of hundreds of samples per pixel. If the renderer then chooses to bounce some(*) of those rays off into the scene to pickup GI it might double the render time but you're rewarded with crisply detailed multi-bounce GI. At AA16 it can look incredibly good. If you only render at lower AA around 2 to 6, path tracing will be noisy so you won't want it for final renders. But I'll let you choose whether to use path traced GI or not.

(*) how many rays and where... this is where the art meets the science.

Matt

[bobbystahr]

Well that certainly explained a lot, thanks Matt...having the choice will be handy if not necessary.

[KyL]

One of the key realisations I've had is this: if you're already rendering with very high anti-aliasing, you're already half way towards being able to path trace (brute force GI) without necessarily adding more noise.

Some of the best vegetation renders use AA of 10 or more. At this level you're getting into the territory of hundreds of samples per pixel. If the renderer then chooses to bounce some(*) of those rays off into the scene to pickup GI it might double the render time but you're rewarded with crisply detailed multi-bounce GI. At AA16 it can look incredibly good. If you only render at lower AA around 2 to 6, path tracing will be noisy so you won't want it for final renders. But I'll let you choose whether to use path traced GI or not.

(*) how many rays and where... this is where the art meets the science.

Matt

This looks extremely promising!

It might be too early to ask but what about the shaders? Would you still be able to "update" the default shader or would this require a complete rework?

[Oshyan]

Matt may get your question, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean about updating the default shader.

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

Matt may get your question, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean about updating the default shader.

- Oshyan

That might be in reference to hannes recent post about using one texture map for multiple parts and the automation of sorts of this.

[Matt]

This looks extremely promising!

It might be too early to ask but what about the shaders? Would you still be able to "update" the default shader or would this require a complete rework?

All existing shaders will be made to work with new rendering modes, with almost no changes needed from the user. Specular/reflectivity settings in the Default Shader are automatically used to control glossy reflections in the path tracer.

Matt