Phtoton Mapping active?

[Stoehr]

While I'm asking -
Is Light Penetration and Light Falloff for surface thickness active?
I've tried a variety of different numbers but I can see any changes. I'm using these with translucentcy.

[gsuttor]

Try changing your light to a panel,sphere,spot or point light.

If I remember distant lights (linear) dont wrk with it.

Try it out I guess and see.

[Stoehr]

I've been using points and spots. I'll look back through my scene, and try panels.

[Stoehr]

Another note about Photon Mapping -
With my Princess character, if I enable Photon or Hybrid for GI, messiah crashes. Consistently.

With all other scenes I've tested photon mapping with, it's just black. No content, just the silhouette.
EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I have two spot lights, and one point light in the scene.

[Julez4001]

Same with me. Waiting on next rev.

[chikega]

Same here ...

[fwtep]

Um, are you sure you're letting it finish rendering? It shows black while it's emitting the photons if there's no previous image there. Look at the readout on the bottom of the interface. Just tried it here and it works fine. I also used it on the Sponza test scene and it worked great.

[simeon.n]

Photon mapping works best in a closed or semi-closed environment (ie., something enclosed in walls for the light to bounce from). Also, when using photon mapping you can set the GI bounces as high as you like with very little noticeable difference in render time (I usually use about 12 or so bounces with photon mapping).

You will almost always achieve silhouettes if you try to do a sky-dome style render with photon mapping, since the "Environment" surface doesn't emit light when photon mapping is selected - so you need lots of walls/floors for your lights to bounce off and illuminate your models, otherwise the light is "lost" in the infinite environment.

[Stoehr]

Originally posted by simeon.n
Photon mapping works best in a closed or semi-closed environment (ie., something enclosed in walls for the light to bounce from). Also, when using photon mapping you can set the GI bounces as high as you like with very little noticeable difference in render time (I usually use about 12 or so bounces with photon mapping).

You will almost always achieve silhouettes if you try to do a sky-dome style render with photon mapping, since the "Environment" surface doesn't emit light when photon mapping is selected - so you need lots of walls/floors for your lights to bounce off and illuminate your models, otherwise the light is "lost" in the infinite environment.

Thanks Simeon, that helps out greatly. I just didn't have the basic understanding on the usage of photon lighting.

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