PBR what is it good for?

[abvfx]

Hey guys,

If i remember right in H10 that the standard mantra renderer couldn't show light sources. But now in H11 it can with decent control and quality.

With area lights being great 'n all and Mantra's new standard GI solutions. Can someone tell me what is it that PBR can do that the standard render cant?

Diffuse bounces can be taken care of with photon maps etc and by the looks of things with a higher degree of control than PBR. So if anyone could let me know or point me to a place where i can find the differences i would love to know.

Or is it now just a point of general preference.

Oh can do colour bleeding in the standard render?

Thanks guys.

[Stalkerx777]

Oh can do colour bleeding in the standard render?

The main difference is that you can't have more than 1 diffuse bounce, using irradiance only. With PBR you can. PBR is very cool when you have enough CPU power in your computer/farm. For me, it's much more easier to put area lights right where they should be in real world, and wait for result that i expect to see. No fake fresnel, no fake shadowing, occlusion, very cool raytrace shadows...... Thats what i like in PBR =).

[kubabuk]

I should also mention you have an access to all of that extra data which PBR comes with. All of that can be saved out as extra images planes.

[brianburke]

You're right, the surface model h11 stuff pushes the physically correct lighting models into regular ol' mantra so you can get a pysically based render without using pbr. Pbr still comes up with a more accurate solution for the lighting in the scene tho. Pathtracing (what pbr does) can also be more efficient than normal raytracing when ray trees get big (lots of bounces with distributed ray tracing).

[abvfx]

Thanks for the insight guys.

For me i think when it comes to lighting my scenes the standard renderer might be the best option. Ive never been a fan of GI solutions and other computational intensive features. I like working with spot/distant/area lights to achieve the look i want even if its for a realistic scene.

It always renders faster and is easier to tweak rather than the accurate solution.

Though i will probably use these features as reference when im stuck on how to light certain scenes.