Blender Git Commit Log

Cycles: volume sampling method can now be set per material/world.

This gives you "Multiple Importance", "Distance" and "Equiangular" choices.

What multiple importance sampling does is make things more robust to certain
types of noise at the cost of a bit more noise in cases where the individual
strategies are always better.

So if you've got a pretty dense volume that's lit from far away then distance
sampling is usually more efficient. If you've got a light inside or near the
volume then equiangular sampling is better. If you have a combination of both,
then the multiple importance sampling will be better.