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The following simple renders illustre how "Shading Samples" control the various lighting elements all at once. The scene is mostly matte (diffuse) with a GGX material applied to the tall cube.
| AA=2x2, Shading Samples = 16 | AA=2x2, Shading Samples = 64 | AA=2x2, Shading Samples 256 | AA=4x4, Shading Samples 256 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  | |||||
| 52.431u 0.350s 0:14.20 371.6% --1.27409e+07 | 205.033u 1.717s 0:58.14 355.5% -- 4.87044e+07 | 799.045u 8.565s 3:41.80 364.1% – 1.91247e+08 | 809.283u 8.845s 3:46.35 361.4% – 1.94816e+08 | |||||
| Number of Rays | 12.7 millions | 48.7 millions | 191 millions | 194 millions | ||||
| Time | 6.5 seconds | 26.5 seconds | 100 seconds | 108 seconds | ||||
| Remarks | Draft render | Notice how diffuse, specular and shadows improve together. | High quality render with linear improvement among all lighting elements. | Increasing pixel samples do not affect |
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A very important feature of the Unified Budget Sampling is that sampling quality is independent of the number of lights. Consider the following two renders. One is done using 3Delight the other is using PrMan.
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