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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?

brownie wrote: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...

Thank you for your quick and efficient answer.