For repeat / extend / mirror mode, both wrap and read_clip functions did
the bounds check. Removing it improves performance between 0.5% and 1.5%
in the classroom scene in one test. Clip mode is unchanged.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/109304
The Voronoi Smooth F1 mode breaks when the Smoothness is 0 for OSL. This is
due to a zero division in the shader.
To fix this, standard F1 is used when Smoothness is 0.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/109255
for energy preservation and better compatibility with other renderes. Ref: #108505
Point light now behaves the same as a spherical mesh light with the same overall energy (scaling from emission strength to power is \(4\pi^2R^2\)).
# Cycles
## Comparison
| Mesh Light | This patch | Previous behavior |
| -------- | -------- | -------- |
|  |  |  |
The behavior stays the same when `radius = 0`.
| This patch | Previous behavior |
| -------- | -------- |
|  |  |
No obvious performance change observed.
## Sampling
When shading point lies outside the sphere, sample the spanned solid angle uniformly.
When shading point lies inside the sphere, sample spherical direction uniformly when inside volume or the surface is transmissive, otherwise sample cosine-weighted upper hemisphere.
## Light Tree
When shading point lies outside the sphere, treat as a disk light spanning the same solid angle.
When shading point lies inside the sphere, it behaves like a background light, with estimated outgoing radiance
\[L_o=\int f_aL_i\cos\theta_i\mathrm{d}\omega_i=\int f_a\frac{E}{\pi r^2}\cos\theta_i\mathrm{d}\omega_i\approx f_a \frac{E}{r^2}\],
with \(f_a\) being the BSDF and \(E\) `measure.energy` in `light_tree.cpp`.
The importance calculation for `LIGHT_POINT` is
\[L_o=f_a E\cos\theta_i\frac{\cos\theta}{d^2}\].
Consider `min_importance = 0` because maximal incidence angle is \(\pi\), we could substitute \(d^2\) with \(\frac{r^2}{2}\) so the averaged outgoing radiance is \(f_a \frac{E}{r^2}\).
This only holds for non-transmissive surface, but should be fine to use in volume.
# EEVEE
When shading point lies outside the sphere, the sphere light is equivalent to a disk light spanning the same solid angle. The sine of the new half-angle is the tangent of the previous half-angle.
When shading point lies inside the sphere, integrating over the cosine-weighted hemisphere gives 1.0.
## Comparison with Cycles
The plane is diffuse, the blue sphere has specular component.
| Before | |After ||
|---|--|--|--|
|Cycles|EEVEE|Cycles|EEVEE|
|||||
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108506
When baking only indirect lighting, light sampling is skipped at the
first bounce. However, light evaluation is still done, so depending
on how the MIS weights end up more or less of the direct lighting
still ends up in the bake.
This is most noticeable with background lighting, but can also be
reproduced with e.g. point lights with a large radius.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108955
Better to disable than crashing, as we are not expecting a quick fix. The cause
is likely similar to issues with the light tree, which was already disabled.
Ref #104013
The problem here was that when direct light contibutions to baking were
disabled, the kernel just skipped all direct lighting evaluation.
However, at secondary bounces, "direct light" would actually end up
being indirect (since there's an extra bounce along the way), but
we're still skipping it.
Therefore, only apply direct lighting skipping at the first bounce.
This fixes an issue where the light tree sampling algorithm would
discard light samples from groups of distance lights with an angle
greater than 0 when it shouldn't.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108832
Fractal noise is the idea of evaluating the same noise function multiple times with
different input parameters on each layer and then mixing the results. The individual
layers are usually called octaves.
The number of layers is controlled with a "Detail" slider.
The "Lacunarity" input controls a factor by which each successive layer gets scaled.
The existing Noise node already supports fractal noise. Now the Voronoi Noise node
supports it as well. The node also has a new "Normalize" property that ensures that
the output values stay in a [0.0, 1.0] range. That is except for the F2 feature where
in rare cases the output may be outside that range even with "Normalize" turned on.
How the individual octaves are mixed depends on the feature and output socket:
- F1/Smooth F1/F2:
- Distance/Color output:
The individual Distance/Color octaves are first multiplied by a factor of
`Roughness ^ (#layers - 1.0)` then added together to create the final output.
- Position output:
Each Position octave gets linearly interpolated with the combined output of the
previous octaves. The Roughness input serves as an interpolation factor with
0.0 resutling in only using the combined output of the previous octaves and
1.0 resulting in only using the current highest octave.
- Distance to Edge:
- Distance output:
The Distance octaves are mixed exactly like the Position octaves for F1/Smooth F1/F2.
It should be noted that Voronoi Noise is a relatively slow noise function, especially
at higher dimensions. Increasing the "Detail" makes it even slower. Therefore, when
optimizing a scene one should consider trying to use simpler noise functions instead
of Voronoi if the final result is close enough.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106827
So far, each closure in Cycles was either diffuse OR glossy OR
transmissive, and its color and contributions were assigned
to the corresponding direct/indirect/color passes.
However, since Glass is a single closure now, that is no longer enough,
since glass has both a glossy and a transmissive component.
Therefore, this commit adds support for splitting contributions from
the Glass closure between the two types.
For 4.0, we might want to also use this for Principled Hair since it
also technically has both types, but that would be a change from
the existing result so it's not part of 3.6 yet.
`sd->type` was set to `PRIMITIVE_TRIANGLE` when it should be
`PRIMITIVE_LAMP`.
Function #lights_intersect_impl sets `isect->prim` to `lamp`, which is
passed to function #shader_setup_from_sample. There `prim != PRIM_NONE`
is evaluated to `true`, thus setting `sd->type` to `PRIMITIVE_TRIANGLE`
erroneously. This fix checks `lamp != LAMP_NONE` first, as in all other
usages of #shader_setup_from_sample `LAMP_NONE` is passed as the value
of `lamp`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108769
In Embree, tfar modification is taken into account by rtcIntersect1
only when hits are accepted. In order to overcome this, we now check
manually for a max_t value in the filter function.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108706
We should be recording only the N closest hits in case the number of
hits is exceeding the maximum allowed or the size of the hits stack.
Previously, some cases made it record hits beyond the furthest recorded
one due to lack of hit distance check.
The input socket of Image Texture node is connected with the UV output
of Texture Coordinate node by default, the later reads the geometry UV,
which is not available for lights because they have no real geometry.
The current implementation simply retrieves UV from shader data.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108691
This is added so that some texture pipeline with point light and spot
light could work as before. Some people use the Normal socket from
Texture Coordinate node for texturing light, however the Normal there is
actually the incoming light direction and should be corrected. Using the
Parametric socket from Geometry node + normal transform from world to
object with Vector Transform node delivers the same result as using the
Normal socket from Texture Coordinate node.
Currently for lights only normal transformation works, because only
there we fetch light transform properly. This is a confusing behaviour,
but testing if it's a lamp in all relevant functions could have bad
impact on the performance. A more proper solution would be to change
lights to real objects, which is planned for the future.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108666
While the multiscattering GGX code is cool and solves the darkening problem at higher roughnesses, it's also currently buggy, hard to maintain and often impractical to use due to the higher noise and render time.
In practice, though, having the exact correct directional distribution is not that important as long as the overall albedo is correct and we a) don't get the darkening effect and b) do get the saturation effect at higher roughnesses.
This can simply be achieved by adding a second lobe (https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2017-shading-course/imageworks/s2017_pbs_imageworks_slides_v2.pdf) or scaling the single-scattering GGX lobe (https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/turquin/ms_comp_final.pdf). Both approaches require the same precomputation and produce outputs of comparable quality, so I went for the simple albedo scaling since it's easier to implement and more efficient.
Overall, the results are pretty good: All scenarios that I tested (Glossy BSDF, Glass BSDF, Principled BSDF with metallic or transmissive = 1) pass the white furnace test (a material with pure-white color in front of a pure-white background should be indistinguishable from the background if it preserves energy), and the overall albedo for non-white materials matches that produced by the real multi-scattering code (with the expected saturation increase as the roughness increases).
In order to produce the precomputed tables, the PR also includes a utility that computes them. This is not built by default, since there's no reason for a user to run it (it only makes sense for documentation/reproducibility purposes and when making changes to the microfacet models).
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107958
A couple of mistakes since the light linking commit:
- The +1 got missed in some of the refactors in the branch
- The order of arguments to the shadow path split was wrong
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108420
