is Firefly close to caustics and path-tracing?

i taking days off from the day job to work on my skill level,
but can't decide which direction to go in?

what*  is* global illumination?

simply said its the light that IS.. 

like when the sun does not shine directly into the room ..there is still light in the room ..

So global light is everywhere   unless your in a pitch darkroom with no light or wndows ..

but still even then there is a kind of global light .. but verry little  

I hope this is a good enough answer 

Chris

Btw you can see GI at its best with a white prop and no texture  ..

render such a thing with and whitout GI and you will see the diffence 

Chris

"what  is global illumination?"

Indirect lighting handles it in Poser...

is there a light 'source' with GI?

Quote - is there a light 'source' with GI?

In the 3d world there must be light source with GI settings ..

In the real world its the SUN that gives GI to the world..

In poser its like said above the INDIRECT lighting that is GI 

but poser IDL doesn't give path-tracing.

Quote - but poser IDL doesn't give path-tracing.

Not true-path tracing, because Firefly is a biased renderer.  You can disable irradiance caching, but at the expense of render time...

i crank my irradiance up to a 100. 

Which will increase your render time tremendously.

yeah.  i should try some comparison renders.

i'm gonna be on pp12 for quite a while yet.

does being a biased renderer mean poser will never have path tracing?

On its own, 'Path Tracing' is just another method of calculating GI, like 'Irradiance Caching' or Photon Mapping'.

3Delight or Cinema's Physical Renderer, for example, are both still biased renderers.

(You also need physically accurate cameras, physically accurate lights and physically accurate materials for unbiased rendering.)

If you want to play with an unbiased renderer on the cheap, there is free Pose2Lux...

http://snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

In addition to LuxRender, Blender has an unbiased renderer: Cycles. After you've watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyMZ8JG9Yqs

...pinch yourself and try to remember that Blender is indeed a free download. Blender GI is pretty amazing. Even though it is still faking it, even the faked caustics looks quite good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALlP3GSrmK4

Forgot to mention: Blender takes advantage of the GPU of your NVidia graphics card. At this point, GPU-rendering requires a CUDA-ready NVidia graphics card. Don't see that changing anytime soon, but I suppose anything can happen.