Photon Mapping

-- Anti-Aliasing Settings

Filter - 3 Anti-Aliasing reconstruction filters to use when resampling:

Min Sample - Number of samples to use on first Anti-Aliasing pass.
Pixel Width - Width of Anti-Aliasing pixel filter. [0-8]
Passes - Maximum number of Anti-Aliasing passes.
Inc Sample - Number of samples for additional Anti-Aliasing passes.
Threshold - Color threshold for additional Anti-Aliasing samples in next pass.

-- General Settings --

Ray Depth - Amount of times that rays can be reflected in specular surfaces or pass through transparent surfaces.
Transparent Shadow depth - Amount of transparent surfaces that shadow rays can get through to find light sources.
Gamma In - The default gamma value for all colors, lights and textures.
This value is used to convert these values to linear color space used by the Yafaray renderer.
Gamma Out - The gamma value target for the rendered image.
CPU Threads - Number of CPU threads used by YafaRay. [-1] All threads.
This number should be equal to the number of CPU threads in your computer or minus one if you find that using all the
CPU threads bogs down your computer.
Normal Shadows / Transparent Shadows - Switches from Normal to Transparent Shadows.
Save Alpha - Exports an alpha file in addition to the RGB output file.
Z - Channel - Enable the Depth Channel in the output file.
Clamp RGB - Color depth is reduced to a low dynamic range before Anti-Aliasing filtering.

YafaRay Official Docs Render Settings

- Diffuse Photons -

Photons - Number of photons to use.
Search - Maximum number of non-caustic photons to be filtered.
Radius - Blur radius for photons.
AO Color - Color for Ambient Occlusion output. Useful for testing the AO effect.

- Caustics Photons -

Count - Number of photons to use.
Radius - Blur radius for photons.
Photon Map Processing - Types of Caustic Photon Map Processing to generate:
Generate Only - Generates the Caustic Photon Map in the scene.
Generate Save - Generates and Saves a yaf_test_caustic.photonmap file to where you rendered the image.
Load - Loads the yaf_test_caustic.photonmap file from where you rendered the image.
Reuse Previous - Reuses the previously generated Caustic Photon Map from memory.
When loading a saved map, it is very IMPORTANT to ensure they match the scene and ONLY for camera changes.

YafaRay Official Docs Photon mapping

-- Final Gather --

FG Active - Enable Final Gather (Photon Mapping only).
Show Map - Directly show radiance map (disables final gathering step).
Bounces - Number of bounces to recuse the Final Gather.
Samples - Number of samples to use for Final Gather.

YafaRay Official Docs Final gather

-- Output Render File --

View - If enabled YafaRay will render the Workspace view.
Camera - If enabled YafaRay will render the set Camera view.
Width - The width of the image rendered.
Height - The height of the image rendered.
> File name for rendered image output. This is where the rendered results will be saved.
Open Output Folder - Opens the folder entered into the above path.
Render - Exports XML file and spawns the YafaRay renderer.

YafaRay Official Docs Lighting Methods Overview

Tutorial Understanding Photon Mapping

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