By default lighting from the world is computed solely with indirect light
sampling. However for more complex environment maps this can be too noisy, as
sampling the BSDF may not easily find the highlights in the environment map
image. By enabling this option, the world background will be sampled as a lamp,
with lighter parts automatically given more samples.
Map Resolution specifies the size of the importance map (res x res). Before
rendering starts, an importance map is generated by "baking" a grayscale image
from the world shader. This will then be used to determine which parts of the
background are light and so should receive more samples than darker parts.
Higher resolutions will result in more accurate sampling but take more setup
time and memory.
Patch by Mike Farnsworth, thanks!
* Add max diffuse/glossy/transmission bounces
* Add separate min/max for transparent depth
* Updated/added some presets that use these options
* Add ray visibility options for objects, to hide them from
camera/diffuse/glossy/transmission/shadow rays
* Is singular ray output for light path node
Details here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Render/Cycles/LightPaths
* Add alpha pass output, to use set Transparent option in Film panel.
* Add Holdout closure (OSL terminology), this is like the Sky option in the
internal renderer, objects with this closure show the background / zero
alpha.
* Add option to use Gaussian instead of Box pixel filter in the UI.
* Remove camera response curves for now, they don't really belong here in
the pipeline, should be moved to compositor.
* Output full float values for rendering now, previously was only byte precision.
* Add a patch from Thomas to get a preview passes option, but still disabled
because it isn't quite working right yet.
* CUDA: don't compile shader graph evaluation inline.
* Convert tabs to spaces in python files.
