Blender Git Commit Log

Fix T51836: Cycles: Fix incorrect PDF approximations of the MultiGGX closures

The PDF of the MultiGGX sampling is approximated by the singlescattering GGX
term as well as a scaled diffuse term that makes up for the energy in the
multiscattering component that's missed by GGX.

However, there were two problems with the glossy terms: The diffuse term missed
a normalization factor, and the singlescattering term was not properly scaled
down based on the albedo estimate.

The glass term was completely wrong and has been rewritten. It uses the fresnel
factor to weight reflection vs. refraction and uses the glossy MultiGGX model
for reflection.
For refraction, the correct singlescattering term is now used, and a new
albedo approximation is used that was derived by evaluating GGX albedo for
roughnesses from 0 to 1 and IORs from 1 to 3 and fitting numerical
approximations to it. The resulting model has a mean relative error of 9e-5,
but could probably be simplified without losing noticable accuracy in the
final render.

The improved PDFs help with glossy highlights (due to better light sampling vs.
closure sampling MIS) and fix the situation described in T51836 where mixing
MultiGGX with other closures (as it happens in e.g. the Principled
BSDF) causes incorrect darkening.