Rendered with path tracing in 4.3.08.frontier

[Matt]

Rendered using 4.3.08.frontier.

- Enabled "path tracing on surfaces" in the Advanced tab of the renderer
- Enabled "robust adaptive sampling (BETA)" in sampling settings

[Matt]

Comparison: "path tracing" vs. "standard renderer"

[Matt]

Here's the scene file (reduced AA to 2 for faster rendering).

Requires Terragen 4.3.08 or higher.

[mhaze]

Lovely lighting but glass shader does not work with these settings and render time is much slower.

[mhaze]

Glass shader not working at all! Worked with previous frontier version

[mhaze]

Comparison Pics - build 4.3.08.frontier
No Path Tracing
[attach=1]


With Path Traing
[attach=2]

Glass shader not working properly in either!

[Matt]

Transparency doesn't work with the path tracer yet. But what does it look like in previous builds?

[pokoy]

Path tracing?! Matt, I love you!. The time penalty is a bit hefty, however... any chance PT will be faster in the future?

BTW, I see new beta exe's being dropped regularly but don't see a change log... is there any place I can see what's new in recent versions?

[mhaze]

It should be a mad blue green glass.

[mhaze]

Sorry should be medium. Typing  in a car

[Matt]

Path tracing?! Matt, I love you!. The time penalty is a bit hefty, however... any chance PT will be faster in the future?

Yes it will continue to get faster as I make it smarter.

BTW, I see new beta exe's being dropped regularly but don't see a change log... is there any place I can see what's new in recent versions?

If you use Check for Updates in the app, the frontier builds should be presented as an optional update (for Pro and Creative users). From there you can see the change log.

[Matt]

...but if you have already installed an update, you can find the change log in the Docs or Documentation folder inside the program folder.

[pokoy]

I see - thanks! Will frontier builds replace stable builds or can they be installed side by side?

PT - will TG get unified sampling at some point? We have a few places to set sampling which is prone to user error. Also, it can be hard to tell which sampling contributor is responsible for high render times if you need to get them down. But I imagine this is quite a task...

[WAS]

There are so many reflection projects/experiments I want to try this on >.< From what I can tell, this is the sort of interaction from TG I've been looking for when developing some materials.

Will path tracing be able to handle surfaces and objects separately to allow transparency in some instances while using path tracing?

Going to play with this in freeware version and try to play with reflection setting and techniques to see how close I can get without path tracing.

[WAS]

The extra light bouncing with shadowed reflections is really the highlight of this example. The subtleties are just beautiful. Here is the original low-light version in 4.2 which of course just lacks this beauty.

I'm really curious how the Path Tracer looks on those brass shaders now because of their mixing of reflections and masking.