Setting Final Gathering Visibility Options

 
 
 

You can use the scene objects' Visibility Property Editor to precisely control how each object participates in final gathering calculations. Every object has the following three final gathering visibility parameters:

 

The scene shown here was rendered using exaggerated final gathering values to make the final gathering effect very prominent.

The character is standing in a corner between a red wall and a green wall. The floor is grey.

Notice how the colors of the various objects bleed into one another. This gives a good indication of how each object's final gathering rays are sampling.

 

Turning off the character's Final Gathering Caster parameter causes it to stop casting final gathering rays to sample the scene. As a result, none of the surrounding colors bleed onto the character.

Notice that the walls are still casting final gathering rays, so the character's color bleeds onto them.

 

Turning off the character's Final Gathering Visible in Sampling parameter makes it invisible to sampling rays cast by other objects. The rays simply pass through the character. The result is that the walls and floor sample one another, but do not sample the character.

Notice that the character is once again a caster, and is sampling the walls, whose color is bleeding onto it.

 

Turning off the character's Final Gathering Sampled parameter causes it not to be sampled by other objects' final gathering rays. Instead of letting the rays through, it absorbs them.

As a result, the walls and floor are not able to sample one another where the character occludes their final gathering rays.

Notice that although the character's color does not bleed onto the walls, a pattern of occlusion is visible where it block final gathering rays.

The options give you fine control over a scene's final gathering computations. For example, you might want to limit the final gathering to specific objects, or remove only a few objects from the final gathering computations. By default, all of these options are turned on.

To set an object's final gathering visibility options

  1. Select the object whose final gathering visibility options you wish to adjust, and open an explorer (press 8).

  2. Expand the object's hierarchy and click its Visibility node to open the object's Visibility property editor.

  3. On the Rendering tab, toggle Caster, Visible to Sampling, and/or Sampled options as needed.

Partitioning Final Gathering Casters and Receivers

If your scene contains a lot of objects, final gathering visibility options can be difficult to manage on a per-object basis. In complex scenes, it's easier to partition objects and use overrides to control final gathering visibility options for all of the objects in a partition. For example, you might use this technique to prevent all of a scene's background objects from casting, or being sampled by final gathering rays. This process is described in Overriding Rendering Visibility for Objects in Partitions.