I'm still trying to grasp fully what the new Photon Mapping does. I ran a test where I rendered the same scene in v13 and in v14 to see what the changes were. Here are the results.


Wire Frame
v13:
[attachmentid=21067]

v14:
[attachmentid=21069]

I don't know where the camera and lights went (they're still there, I just can't see them). I couldn't turn them on and I looked all over.


Quick Render
v13:
[attachmentid=21070]

Y axis on normal maps are still inverted.

v14:
[attachmentid=21071]

The normal maps seem to be having a problem. They are not rendering and they are leaving behind strange artifacts.


Final (Left image is at 25% radiosity intensity, Right image is at 100% radiosity intensity)
v13:
[attachmentid=21072]

The ambiance map in the exr did not seem to decrease in intensity very well. It was more like turning down the brightness in photoshop than changing the levels. Render time was 18:09.

v14:
[attachmentid=21073]

Radiosity seems to work better with specular; however, there are huge dark areas in the shot (right behind the large box). They started to come into view when radiosity was well over 1000% intensity. Render time was 22:35; longer than v13.

holllllllyyyyyyy crap!!!!!!!

yves, where for art though TToTT we needs your guidance and explanation of bizarre finominan

Your surfaces are highly specular. Almost mirrorlike. The dark areas are normal in that case because the scene almost totally lack diffuse illumination. DIffuse surfaces takes their illumination for everywhere around them while highly specular surfaces only take their illumination from right in front of the surface. So the back of the large cube is not directly illuminated and the wall behind it receives its illumination from the back of that cube.

If you want to model shiny metals (it looks like this is what you are looking for), then the surface reflectivity should match the surface specular intensity and you should turn Soft Reflection ON.

I would guess that a scene like that would be made of mostly tarnished, oxidized or slightly rusted metals. In that case, specular size should be set larger and specular intensity & reflectivity should be set lower.

For pure recently buffed metals, that is not tarnished or oxidized, reflectivity and specular intensity should be set to 100%. Then specular size should be set to match the surface smoothness.