Is it me Or...?

[brownie]

Sometimes I forget to turn On the photonmapping button, and so I get a more traditional Raytracing render.

But when I finally realize my mistake, sometimes I am a bit disappointed by the photonmapping result.
To be clear, I find the strong shadows in raytracing mode very appealing and somewhat realistic.

So here are the questions :
-After the first years of Global illumination, when every bluish renders was considered as "superrealistic", aren't we in a period where we don't figure out how much our renders lack of shadow? (3D history is a long series of trends. See the overexagerated SSS effects on faces to understand what I mean)

-Wouldn't it be nice to add "a bit of " raytracing rendering in Kray engine to get stronger shadows?

-Why nobody talks here about the possiblity of adding an AO pass?

[jure]

Sometimes I forget to turn On the photonmapping button, and so I get a more traditional Raytracing render.

But when I finally realize my mistake, sometimes I am a bit disappointed by the photonmapping result.
To be clear, I find the strong shadows in raytracing mode very appealing and somewhat realistic.

So here are the questions :
-After the first years of Global illumination, when every bluish renders was considered as "superrealistic", aren't we in a period where we don't figure out how much our renders lack of shadow? (3D history is a long series of trends. See the overexagerated SSS effects on faces to understand what I mean)

-Wouldn't it be nice to add "a bit of " raytracing rendering in Kray engine to get stronger shadows?

-Why nobody talks here about the possiblity of adding an AO pass?

AO is usefull, but only in small amounts (to dirty up things a little bit). If used too much it looks very fake.
About raytracing shadows - if you want to make your shadows darker then play with the new Tonemap blend plugin. You can get some pretty cool results this way...

[brownie]

Thank you for your quick and efficient answer.