[Radiance-general] Radiance Vs Radiosity

[Lars O. Grobe]

> Are ambient files really independent of the viewfile? 

No, not really ;-) They are, hmm... "populated" depending on the view, 
as the samples depend on the view. But if you change the view, the 
prior samples should still be valid (as long as you didn't change the 
scene). So the samples can be reused for different views.

As I understand the panoramic picture ambient file topic, the idea is 
to get the ambient file "full" before starting the actual rendering. 
This is just the same idea that is behind the "initial ambient file" 
trick, where people render the images in low resolution first, so that 
the ambient file collects ambient data during a fast rendering, and 
with that, the final rendering is started. You can get some problems if 
you start the final rendering with an empty ambient file, as the 
changes in the beginning can show up in the image.

However, there should never be a reason not to re-use the ambient file 
in an unchanged scene and with unchanged ambient parameters (right?)!

CU Lars.

Lars O. Grobe
grobe at gmx.net