Difference between Real Time vs Path Traced

Hi everyone!

Can someone explain me what is a difference between the 2? You don’t have to be super specific, allthough that would be super nice :3

Hi @przemyslaw.wiktorek95

Perhaps this video will help to clarify the differences a little bit

I would prefer some more technical explenation, but thanks ^^

Real time Ray Tracing - Fires rays from the Camera into the scene, and is configurable, as you can tell it what it can “see” to speed it up, i.e., no shadows, no caustics, no refraction, etc.

Path Tracing - Fires rays from all Light Sources into the scene, collecting rays as they reach the Camera [the path from the light to the camera], and is more accurate and expensive, and not generally configurable, as the collected rays contain all the scene information along the path of the ray.

2 Likes

What I don’t understand is how they can say that iRay is “true spectral simulation” when it doesn’t seem to reflect the sky. This is using the “LA Vista” default environment in iray:

And this is using the path tracing mode (and notice how there’s more blue from the sky in the model):