Quote - There is an umbrella in the Fashion Studio set from Daz.  I'M NOT SAYING PEOPLE SHOULD GO AND BUY IT :)  I´m saying I have it and I´m gonna do some tests.

I´m not a photographer but when umbrellas are used in studios the light is pointed into the umbrella isn't it?   I wonder if this would work in Poser....

It does work in the sense that it happens. But the results are sloppy at low settings, and only "ok" at high settings. Remember, fast IDL means more errors. We've already seen that relying 100% on indirect illumination either means long render times or poor quality.

I say that because if you point a spotlight into a prop umbrella, it's pretty much the same as using a self-lit prop umbrella, in terms of illumination. You're not using the light directly anymore. On the other hand, it will be slower and require an extra bounce. If you were using 4, you'll need 5. My demo here is that a hybrid approach stays away from the bad part of the performance of either. Using lights only, it requires that we use an array of many lights grouped in a cluster, which is slow. Using small self-lit props only, it requires that we use 20000 samples and very little caching, which is extremely slow. Using large self-lit props allows lower sampling and faster rendering, but won't fit into interiors.

This is a hybrid approach that pretty much solves all the problems at once - good rendering quality, convincing lighting, easy placement options, and fast renders.

And it's f'ing FREE, not $9.99.

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