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Traditionally rendering has been concerned with the RGB colors, because that's what the screen has to output. So your materials are defined in terms of what col

Traditionally rendering has been concerned with the RGB colors, because that's what the screen has to output. So your materials are defined in terms of what color objects are. Then they started adding "effects" on top like reflectiveness, bump and normal maps, noise, etc. to make objects look more... real. Physically based rendering approaches from the opposite end. It asks, what are the characteristics of the material, in terms of simulated light interacting with a nontrivial surface, so that the thing appears on screen as it should if it were a real object with real light bouncing off its nanostructure surface. Ray tracing is one method of rendering, but you can physically based render the old way too with fragment shaders. You just won't get global illumination so it won't look as "real".

ohgodplsno 4y ago
There are ways of faking GI, even with current techniques and without using ray tracing. Screenspace GI can look convincing (and also miserably fail). Radiosity techniques exist, etc. We've been able to fake global illumination for a while now. The results aren't perfect, but then again, that's what realtime computer graphics have been forever, a bunch of tricks that are close enough to reality, and 10 artists crying in the corner because they had to spend 5 hours moving an asset around so it looks just right.
zokier 4y ago
> Traditionally rendering has been concerned with the RGB colors I do need to point out that many (most?) so called physically based renderers are still RGB based, with all the downsides that come with that. Mitsuba is notable for also having spectral rendering, which is a distinct feature that models light as a spectrum instead of rgb triplet.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Man they really need to explain what is unique about it on the home page better. I know what differentiable rendering and spectral rendering are but neither are mentioned. I have no idea what a retargetable renderer is and it seems like nobody else uses that term at all (seriously - Google "retargetable renderer").

ohgodplsno 4y ago

There are ways of faking GI, even with current techniques and without using ray tracing. Screenspace GI can look convincing (and also miserably fail). Radiosity techniques exist, etc. We've been able to fake global illumination for a while now. The results aren't perfect, but then again, that's what realtime computer graphics have been forever, a bunch of tricks that are close enough to reality, and 10 artists crying in the corner because they had to spend 5 hours moving an asset around so it looks just right.

zokier 4y ago

> Traditionally rendering has been concerned with the RGB colors I do need to point out that many (most?) so called physically based renderers are still RGB based, with all the downsides that come with that. Mitsuba is notable for also having spectral rendering, which is a distinct feature that models light as a spectrum instead of rgb triplet.

IshKebab 4y ago
Man they really need to explain what is unique about it on the home page better. I know what differentiable rendering and spectral rendering are but neither are mentioned. I have no idea what a retargetable renderer is and it seems like nobody else uses that term at all (seriously - Google "retargetable renderer").