Voxel Size and Visual Influence

How do sizes of the voxels influence the visual results? As previously described, the total light data (including direct light and indirect light) of the GI lighting take the Voxels as units of measure. The meshes in a single voxel cube take identical strength of the lights. Therefore, the smaller the voxel cubes, the more detail can be depicted in the lights and shadows.

The voxel units in the illustration below is highlighted in red boxes.

• Left: There are two voxel units which can display more details for the shaded area beneath the ball.
• Right: There is only one voxel unit that include the half bottom of the ball, resulting in less detail for the same region.

The Actual iClone Sample

• When the voxel cubes are bigger (Range = 500): In the following case, the lights and shadows spread more equally, there are fewer details for the dark parts. (Because the voxel units are bigger, there are less details available for display in the shaded areas).
  
• When the voxel cubes are medium (Range = 200): In this case, the lights and shadows do not look much different, however, compared with the previous example with bigger voxel cubes, this scene appends additional shadows onto the floor and the wall to the right.
  
• When the voxel cubes are relatively small (Range = 50): In this case, the entire scene turns darker because the voxels are re-divided and the lights and shadows are re-calculated as well (not divided based on the biggest cube), therefore, the visual results will not be generated from the voxel size in the previous point to add more details; instead, the voxels cubes are re-generated, which alters the deployments of the cubes drastically and the consequence is that the lights and shadows will not be different each time the voxel size and characteristics of the Voxel GI is adjusted.
  

  When using GI, one needs to factor in the size of the scene objects along with lighting expectations.