www.kraytracing.com

Here is the first synthetic rendertest by Janusz of kray skyportals (guiding photonmap photons through a window). Both images rendered with same settings except with and without a portal. 3.30 minutes

Wow Silver, very promising. Great.

Very very cool. I love the lighting in the skyportal image, very natural.

promising, yes !

I can use that on some current open projects already, awaiting the release, thanks guys !

Another doodle

Can't wait to get my hands on this...

I'm not really sure what the first render is supposed to be showing - as opposed to the skyportal render, there's not really any lighting to speak of; it looks more like ambient occlusion. Was it just a very inaccurate photon map?

Does it influence FG rays to target the skyportal as well, or just photons?

exact.. When you dont get enough photons in to a room it will look more like shabby occlusion but when (almost) every photon targets into the room through the window you gets faster light solution and higher quality of light.
Yes when skyportals leave internal beta stage it will also guide finalgather rays wich it doesnt for the moment so theres still improvements to do. Always more and more improvements....

Im so excited so i throw anything at kray now. Another skyportal doodle. Only skylight and weak sunlight (spot) no optimizations or anything just set it up and pressed render with low AA

Ok I'm getting excited also with this stuff... Starting look real great... Is it easy also to use those sky portals?

Incredible render times Silver. Great great gibox test.

I can't wait to test the new release.

Cooking on gas!

Presumably we're not going to be limited to just one skyportal though?

Phil

So far the skyportals works as a shader that is applied on any surface you want to use as a skyportal. The surface can be Global skyportal or local skyportal.
A global one will take all emitted photons into account and pass everything through it. That way there wount be any photons at all shoot and hitting on the outside of a house for example, everything will go into the windows if setup as Global. If you apply global skyportal to many windows it will scale the photons proportional and divide them among all windows. By assigning a global skyportal shader to the window glas in a room and making the skyportal invisible the glas will render as usual but also guide the photons.
Caustics skyportals do the same as above but only for caustics.

Local skyportals is more erh.. local and can be used in ....to be honest we dont know yet if/how there will be any local skyportals but maybe we can use them to further finetune/guide photons to crucial places so it's an idea we have and try to finetune some more. Anyone have more ideas?

Silver, your first test "test_Skyportal.jpg" has a great light setup. I remember the unbiased render engines when I see this test. Great great.

The render times are smaller with skyportals ?

Do you need less photons to get a good result ? I understand/believe that now you can show to the photons the way. ??

Yes since they hit the target easier and faster you dont have to shoot that much. More photons also gives better detailed irradiance and photons overall gives higher quality irradiance than for example lmaps. Less splotches/yellowish dot's and you can use much lower n-values.