Cycles bi-directional path tracer
A more accurate, bi-directional path tracer for Cycles, for improved rendering realism, especially for product visualization. Bi-directional path tracing offers better light and shadow tracing in difficult-to-trace situations, such as rays through glass, and results in better caustics. Luxrender, Mitsuba and Renderman already offer such tracers as an option.
3 Comments
MLT is not supported in PRMan currently. From the description it sounds like you are asking for Vertex Connection and Merging (VCM), which will help a lot more with rendering glass and caustics than MLT.
Same thread, rightclickselect.com/p/rendering/zbbbbc/adaptive-sampling-support-for-cycles
Adaptive sampling does not reduce realism, a decently implemented adaptive sampler still converges to the exact same result.
I guess the adaptive sampling/MLT mixup here comes from developer.blender.org/T38401, which (sort of) implemented both - but they indeed are fundamentally different things.