The abbreviation “BSD” comes from the word “biased” and we use this term here as an identifier of this engine that uses interpolation schemes (like irradiance cache) to render in shorter times. The word “Adaptive” on the other hand means that we implemented the engine so that more effort is put where it is needed most. Furthermore, this effort is driven by perceptual criteria in order to arrive at a high-quality result according to the human perception.
Field Mapping – A New Revolutionary Approach
Field mapping is a new proprietary technique that evaluates consistently the lighting than cannot reach easily the viewer. With traditional biased engines, the global illumination is often noisy, even when Final Gathering is coupled with Photon Mapping, resulting in blotches in the final render. With Field Mapping, evaluation becomes easy and it brings the expected high quality result without any troubles.
Presets and Easy Tunning
Due to our robust engine, we have the luxury to create presets that work in almost all cases, without further tweaking from the user. This way, the time to tune the biased engine is minimized and new users can get nice results right from the beginning. Using perceptual criteria, the engine adapts better to the local scene difficulties and the settings are simpler than before.No More Thick Walls
The issue of shadow and light leaks has been a “traditional” problem with biased render engines, especially the ones using techniques like Photon Mapping. This is for example the case, where light or shadow from one side of a wall appears on the other side as well, showing an unnatural effect. Field Mapping makes an accurate evaluation and, leaks, that are so common with Photon Mapping, are not present.
Improvements – Shadow Catcher and Bump
The shadow catcher enables a model to be naturally embedded inside a photograph, showing its shadow from the environmental lighting. Shadow catcher is now supported by Adaptive BSD and it is very fast! Even more, the bump and normal mapping under global illumination are also dramatically improved, giving a realistic look to bumped surfaces when indirectly lit. And this, without any speed drop.Walkthrough Animation
The Adaptive BSD engine is also the best one to use when it comes to walkthrough animation. This is because the global illumination solution can be calculated for the whole sequence and reused afterwards for rendering all the frames. With our specific implementation for walkthrough animations, the engine gives a flicker-free animation without any floating “blotchy” patterns.
