On the quality tab for renderers, there is a few GI options. What are those for?
GI stands for Global illumination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_illumination
Ok. Thanks
GI Relative Detail controls the overall detail *relative to the main Detail setting*. So if you adjust the main Detail slider it will also affect the GI results. Think of it like a multiplier for the primary Detail level that is specific to GI (although that's not actually how it works as far as I know). So for example if the main detail is 0.5 and GI Relative Detail is 2, multiply 0.5 by 2 and you get a theoretical GI Detail of "1". If you raise the main Detail slider to 1, your GI detail is now *2*, essentially. It's important then to understand that it is *relative* detail.
GI Sample Quality controls the "accuracy" of individual GI samples in the scene. Increasing this setting will increase the accuracy of lighting and using this in conjunction with a lower GI Relative Detail can produce decent results without as much of a render time increase.
GI Surface Details is an enhancement setting that works on smaller-scale features to improve their lighting quality, but at a significant render time cost. I seldom use this feature.
- Oshyan
Keep in mind xna, that if you're doing skyboxes, GI is the devil. You won't get the exact same lighting on each frame, so you're going to need one of the GI substitutes lying around.
I've had good luck with both Oshyan's TGC file (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=580.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=580.0)) and BigBen's file (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1921.msg18762#msg18762 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1921.msg18762#msg18762), and render-examples at http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1475.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1475.0)).