Single Versus Dual Pipe Acceleration in 3D Renderings
In the Global Parameters section of the Ray trace material or map, there is a grayed-out section towards the bottom of the dialog box.
If you check the Manual Acceleration check box, the whole area becomes active-just tapped into the Voxel Tree controls of the Ray tracer.
Normally, you are leaving it up to the Ray tracer to decide things.
Sometimes, it is better that you take the controls and determine where acceleration will take place.
Manual Acceleration is divided into two sections.
The first is called Single Pipe, which breaks down your scene by faces.
The end result is that most scenes with low face and object counts can benefit from this acceleration.
What happens is that your scene is broken down at the face level into a structured voxel tree.
The division of the tree is determined by the 3D Application Depth setting (a setting of 4 creates a 4 ´ 4 ´ 4 tree).
The 3D Application Divisions setting sets how far the tree can be subdivided.
Face limit sets how many faces can occupy a voxel before the voxel must be divided again.
The higher you set this number, the fewer subdivisions there are.
However, this also results in more hit tests per voxel in order for the Ray tracer to determine what face it is actually hitting in the voxel.
Balance allows you to control how evenly the subdivision is calculated for the scene.
Because most scenes are not evenly distributed (object-wise), a low Balance setting might result in a large voxel that contains only one small object.
If you think this might be the case for you, try increasing the balance.
Your scene will be divided a bit better.
Just remember that it also uses more RAM as you increase the number.
you will find that Single Pipe acceleration works for most scenes because it is primarily designed to handle scenes of less than about 300 objects.
If your scene is a bit meatier, you might want to try using Dual Pipe.
Dual Pipe forces the Ray tracer to break down a scene first into one big voxel tree and then, if checked, each object into its own voxel tree.
Rather than relying solely on where faces are concentrated in the scene, Dual Pipe first looks at the objects.
It then subdivides those voxels based on object complexity.
The end result is potentially a very complex tree but is very efficient for ray hit testing.
All the settings work the same as Single Pipe.
The primary thing to remember with Dual Pipe is that it works much better on larger scenes because it breaks them down by scene first and then objects.
If you check the Manual Acceleration check box, the whole area becomes active-just tapped into the Voxel Tree controls of the Ray tracer.
Normally, you are leaving it up to the Ray tracer to decide things.
Sometimes, it is better that you take the controls and determine where acceleration will take place.
Manual Acceleration is divided into two sections.
The first is called Single Pipe, which breaks down your scene by faces.
The end result is that most scenes with low face and object counts can benefit from this acceleration.
What happens is that your scene is broken down at the face level into a structured voxel tree.
The division of the tree is determined by the 3D Application Depth setting (a setting of 4 creates a 4 ´ 4 ´ 4 tree).
The 3D Application Divisions setting sets how far the tree can be subdivided.
Face limit sets how many faces can occupy a voxel before the voxel must be divided again.
The higher you set this number, the fewer subdivisions there are.
However, this also results in more hit tests per voxel in order for the Ray tracer to determine what face it is actually hitting in the voxel.
Balance allows you to control how evenly the subdivision is calculated for the scene.
Because most scenes are not evenly distributed (object-wise), a low Balance setting might result in a large voxel that contains only one small object.
If you think this might be the case for you, try increasing the balance.
Your scene will be divided a bit better.
Just remember that it also uses more RAM as you increase the number.
you will find that Single Pipe acceleration works for most scenes because it is primarily designed to handle scenes of less than about 300 objects.
If your scene is a bit meatier, you might want to try using Dual Pipe.
Dual Pipe forces the Ray tracer to break down a scene first into one big voxel tree and then, if checked, each object into its own voxel tree.
Rather than relying solely on where faces are concentrated in the scene, Dual Pipe first looks at the objects.
It then subdivides those voxels based on object complexity.
The end result is potentially a very complex tree but is very efficient for ray hit testing.
All the settings work the same as Single Pipe.
The primary thing to remember with Dual Pipe is that it works much better on larger scenes because it breaks them down by scene first and then objects.
