New Physical Material – Greater realism without any extra work from you, and greater compatibility with other software and worklows with mapped Metalness, a choice of Roughness or Glossiness mode, and more
Many surfaces in the real world have some sort of coat applied over them, classic examples being varnish applied over wood, or car paint. With the Legacy Material, you would have to resort to layers to achieve this effect, which was hard to control and unsatisfying in several ways.
The new Clearcoat in the Physical Material has its own bump map, which means you can have a rough wood surface with a smooth varnish over the top of it, or add a slight ripple to the Clearcoat via its own bump independent of the rougher bump of the wood beneath.
Improved Glass – developers are using a new physical model for all kinds of glass created using the new Physical Material. This gives several improvements:
– Rough glass (i.e. with a non-zero Roughnesss, or Glossiness less than 1) now gives more realistic reflections and refractions. This does mean that even with the same values, the new glass may look different (more correct)
– Thin glass can now blur refraction as well as reflection when roughness is used (think frosted glass). It also correctly simulates bouncing within the thin glass. This applies when Roughness is greater than zero, or when Glossiness is less than 1 (since they are the inverse of each other)
Corona PRG Clear Sky Model is the new name for the “Improved” model, and now includes Volume Effect (aerial perspective), Turbidity, Altitude, and Horizon Blur controls
Faster rendering is faster thanks to calculating passes in blocks (invisibly, in most cases), optimized opacity/absorption with multiple hits, faster denoising, and a general speed up that even affects empty scenes
There’s also faster opening of scenes thanks to loading textures and proxies in the background, which means you can start working with your scene even before all assets are fully loaded
