Is rtgi worth it for low light scenes?

[night anchor]

What if my scene is dark and only lit by a flashlight. Is rtgi going to make a solid difference? Maybe if the intensity of the light is high?

[broken sky]

I’ve found that it isn’t

The biggest difference it makes is for indoor / outdoor transitions. It’s a world of difference for hybrid scenes like that

In low light conditions you hardly have any rays to bounce. Path tracers are infamously bad at this

[night anchor]

but define low light conditions tho

mine is a very low light condition except the flashlight which is pretty strong tho

• maybe I could up the intensity and increase bloom idk

but I haven't got to that yet

[broken sky]

This scene - it makes a lot of difference

Here I barely even notice whether it's on or off

[fading wagon]

I think albedo absorption also matters
Darker environments don't allow light to bounce much
But maybe there's a setting for albedo bias for RTGI to get more out of those situations for the cost of physical realism?

[night anchor]

But none of those lights reach very far or are very intense, I wonder how it would do with a bright, long spot light

I will test that when I get back to it

[night anchor]

I mean yeah, I'd expect thwre to be an intensity setting in any case

[broken sky]

Not for albedo