PhotonGI cache

[Sharlybg]

4k render in only 7mn in a simple 1060. Mean 1mn 45 a 2k wich and 21sc at 1k .
Aaaah italian people love speed.
# scuderia Bucciarelli#

[Racleborg]

Less than 2mins (I'm gobsmacked!) GTX660, PGI and OID

Maybe this isn't the best type of scene to show off PGI - I don't know. But it feels really fast to me!

Also, I think the OID has done really well with the repeating patterns in the fabric - 10 seconds!!

[CodeHD]

I just downloaded the daily build to try it out, but I'm having some trouble. Maybe I didn't catch all the current restrictions in this long thread, I don't know... Mybe you can guide me a bit

If i take Blenders default cube scene, switch to luxcore, give the cube a luxcore matte material, activate GI cache and hit F12 it renders fine. Debug output also shows as expected.
If I give the cube a glossy material, blender immediately crashes as soon as I hit F12. If I increae glossy roughness to 0.5 it works again. Alternatively, If I set the cache glossiness threshold to 0.01 it also works.

In my infinitymirror scene I couldn't get it to work at all yet, but that has specular glass surfaces in it. Judging by the example images everyone showed here it doesn't seem like any of this should be a problem...

[B.Y.O.B.]

I can reproduce the crash with glossy default cube, Path CPU + PhotonGI, on Windows.

The terminal log ends with:

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[LuxCore][2.313] Visibility map done in 0.16 secs with 1000000 samples (6.41M samples/sec)
[LuxCore][2.328] PhotonGI trace visibility particles thread count: 16
[LuxCore][2.500] PhotonGI visibility total entries: 0
[LuxCore][2.500] PhotonGI trace photons thread count: 16
Error: Unrecognized Exception

[Dade]

I have added PhotonGI indirect cache filtering. This is a reference debug output (i.e. a lot of photons traced):

This is a debug output while tracing very few photons:

And this is the same rendering with indirect cache filtering:

It is a bit better...

There is a new parameter to control the amount of filtering:

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path.photongi.indirect.filter.radiusscale = 3.0

The default value is 3 and it is expressed has a scale of the lookup radius (as usual). With a value of 2, a cache entry will be average only with direct neighbors and larger scale will takes use farther neighbors in consideration.

[Dade]

[LuxCore][2.500] PhotonGI visibility total entries: 0

You have created a scene with a single material and the material is not cache-able (note: the "PhotonGI visibility total entries: 0"), the exception is telling you PhotonGI can not create not even a single entry. I will add the code to handle the situation but the result isn't exactly very surprising.

[CodeHD]

I appended my mirror-scene. If You open it and hit F12 you get a similar output as B.Y.O.B.:

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[LuxRays][2.625] EmbreeAccel build time: 46ms
[LuxCore][2.625] PhotonGI trace visibility particles thread count: 8
[LuxCore][3.468] PhotonGI visibility total entries: 0
[LuxCore][3.468] PhotonGI trace photons thread count: 8
Error: Unrecognized Exception

I don't have the "visibility map done" line, don't know what that does or if its related to the GI cache?

Next I tried reducing the glossiness threshold to 0.01 and now I get this:

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[LuxRays][8.579] EmbreeAccel build time: 31ms
[LuxCore][8.579] PhotonGI trace visibility particles thread count: 8
[LuxCore][10.079] PhotonGI visibility total entries: 101487
[LuxCore][10.079] PhotonGI trace photons thread count: 8
Error: Unrecognized Exception

The scene includes matte material, so there should be something cache-able (?)

Edit: BTW., I'm running it on Windows 10 as well.

[B.Y.O.B.]

I don't have the "visibility map done" line, don't know what that does or if its related to the GI cache?

No, it's just the "automatic portal" that is used for environment lights like sky or HDRI, if you don't have such a light source it is not computed.

[Dade]

The scene includes matte material, so there should be something cache-able (?)

99.99% is still not cache-able or empty space, it is pointless to use PhotonGI in this scene (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=917).

[CodeHD]

99.99% is still not cache-able or empty space, it is pointless to use PhotonGI in this scene (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=917).

Yes, I already wrote in that thread that I didn't expect much from the bulk of that scene. Only for the logo in the middle, which is matte-transulcent, shouldn't that be cache-able and have some effect when cached?