From the course: Learning V-Ray for Maya

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What is global illumination (GI) in V-Ray?

What is global illumination (GI) in V-Ray? - Maya Tutorial

From the course: Learning V-Ray for Maya

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What is global illumination (GI) in V-Ray?

In this video we'll be taking a look at what GI is inside V-Ray. We have a scene here that is enclosed in a sphere, which has a single light coming from the left. With direct lighting where there is no global illumination, you get a render that looks like this. The shadows in the enclosed areas are very dark and there is no detail seen within that black at all. GI, standing for Global Illumination, allows you to render a bounce light situation, where rays coming from the light source in the scene bounce around in the geometry, giving you a result such as this. GI allows you have refractive and reflective caustics giving you a better reality of glass and other such materials, as well as giving you the ability to have colour bleed along with your materials. What GI allows you to do is to take the rays of light coming from your light source or light sources and allows you to bounce them inside enclosed areas where the direct rays won't reach. These rays, once they bounce off of objects…

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