Physically plausible scene setup

A primary goal of Iray is to provide artists, designers, architects, and other design professionals with the ability to easily create photorealistic imagery. No sophisticated knowledge of the theory behind 3D rendering is required; Iray, and in particular its Iray Photoreal render mode, provides excellent results right out of the box.

However, as a physically-based renderer, Iray requires scenes to be set up in a physically plausible manner. To set up a scene that will yield great photorealistic results with Iray, it is sufficient to honor a few recommendations, which are provided in the following topics.

Furthermore, preparing physically plausible scenes also introduces performance benefits: potential sources of noise and other unexpected situations are implicitly avoided when geometries and materials are set up optimally.