Cycles Volume Planes
Volumetric lightning enhances scenes atmosphere to a high degree. New realtime engine EEVEE approximates volumetric effects by placing a number of planes in the scene (3d texture) to which volumetric effects are rendered. Thats not physically correct but gives a good visual impression in many cases.
In Cycles rendering volumetrics requires alot more computational effort, since volumes are ray marched. How about a similar approach like EEVEE? Instead of expensive volumetric calculations, a number of procedual planes could be placed in the scene temporary while rendering and "slice" of the scenes volume. That may give some nice volumetric effects in a fraction of time.
3 Comments
I agree. Basics like mist in a city/forest are impractically slow in Cycles volumes, without resorting to compositing, which there still is no viewport live preview... It makes designing scene, esp animation workflow very inefficient for an artist.
This is possible to do with a few modifiers. However, since there isn't an easy way to make a mesh from a smoke sim, this isn't always easy to do.
Because Cycles is supposed to be an unbiased renderer I guess.
Otherwise there are plenty things he could do efficiently in seconds.