From the course: V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max Essential Training

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Understanding primary and secondary bounces

Understanding primary and secondary bounces

From the course: V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max Essential Training

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Understanding primary and secondary bounces

- As we have already noted, light in the real world doesn't just bounce once. After being emitted from a source, it will for all intents and purposes just keep on bouncing. Not that it stays infinitely bright, of course, because after an unspecified number of bounces, the level of light and (mumbles) carried will become so low that it can no longer be said to add to the illumination of an environment in a manner that can be perceived by the human eye. The energy itself is still active. The falloff or decay rate of light is such that it can mathematically be said to never really reach absolute zero. Performing such an infinitely reducing calculation, however, in a manner that is completely faithful to the laws of physics, would be extremely expensive and extremely slow in terms of computational power required. Thankfully, V-Ray's GI systems have been designed in such a way as to give us not only a high level of flexibility and control regarding the way we calculate our global…

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