Dave-So opened this issue on Jun 07, 2010 · 277 posts
bagginsbill posted Thu, 10 June 2010 at 3:31 PM
Because shadow rays don't need more than about 50 to do a good job. Soft reflections would need around 1000 or more. Shadow rays have to sample only in a narrow cone. Soft reflections have to sample in a huge cone by comparison.
There are algorithms to do something like irradiance caching for this, and avoid having to do 1000 rays for every pixel. But Firefly doesn't have this.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)