Gems and global illumination

No new Polygon release this week, but a lot has landed for the next one. Most of it came from polishing the configurators.

Gems

Jewellery is one of the main uses for configurators, and I’ve wanted one with nice diamonds for a while.

There is a geo/gem to build the model and its counterpart mat/Gem for the look. The material does internal light bounces, and can also trace the rest of the scene. So a stone set in a ring picks up the metal around it. Each of those features can have a performance cost, so they can be turned on individually.

You can try the second ring demo that showcases those.

Global illumination

Global illumination is another feature I’ve been meaning to add. It’s the light that bounces off surfaces before it reaches your eye, and it’s a big part of what makes a render look real. There are many ways to add that, and I’ve experimented with a few over the years. This one is based on radiance cascades, and while not perfect when geometries are moving, it looks pretty nice on static scenes.

Try this one on the shelf configurator. There is a toggle between day and evening light, and the evening one gets a nice warm feel from the GI.

Performance panel

This was in Polygon v1, and I hadn’t had the chance to add it yet. It’s another tool that helps you debug a scene. This one shows which node is a bottleneck, so you can try other ways to build that part of the scene.

As always, tell me what you build, and what is missing. Reply to this email, or say hello in the Discord, Bluesky or Twitter.

Gui