Can someone ELI5 how Megalight works so much better than the prior approach, and what the tradeoffs might be? (Im not a game developer)
Reading the link below, the best I can surmise is that they shifted the prioritization from following a lightsource through all the different interactions it has, to the opposite of identifying, per pixel, how each pixel is illuminated via a prioritization scheme for light sources, including any nearby pixels. So it's a per-pixel approximation that results in a something far more accurate than the prior 'declared brute force' approach? Each pixel gets 2-5 inbound rays that have the highest impact.
Reading the link below, the best I can surmise is that they shifted the prioritization from following a lightsource through all the different interactions it has, to the opposite of identifying, per pixel, how each pixel is illuminated via a prioritization scheme for light sources, including any nearby pixels. So it's a per-pixel approximation that results in a something far more accurate than the prior 'declared brute force' approach? Each pixel gets 2-5 inbound rays that have the highest impact.
How did I do?
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/...