Improved Global illumination
While ago the first global illumination solution was added to the Neutron engine. The new improved GI now supports instanced geometry so it can be used outdoors as well. It’s based on radiosity volume which holds spherical harmonics coefficients and radiance captured from various directions. This approach is quite accurate since radiance capture pass takes into account all the occluders in the scene but as a consequence it does not run at real-time speed. Other approaches which run at real time speeds use VPLs (virtual point lights) and have little or no occluder information so they produce some artifacts due to light ‘leaks’. Neutron engine will soon have 3 solutions for GI: SSDO, static more accurate GI and real time but less accurate GI. The following video demonstrates the difference in rendering quality based on used approach. Note the bounce of green light on rocks and wall, also note how shadow is darker deeper inside the bush. Also, please note that for the purpose of demonstration the radiosity amount in the video is higher than normal and scene appears a bit darker than what it would normally look.