Modern techniques seem to be more about ease-of-use for the artists rather than getting things to run faster.
Physically based rendering is mostly about ensuring that your models look the same across many different lighting conditions. IIRC, something like Toy Story "cheated" by having the artists change the lighting settings between scenes.
While Wreak it Ralph is the famous Pixar Movie for using a singular "uber-shader" that worked in all situations across the movie.
The "Principled" BSDF was mostly about making things easier to control for the artist. IE: Making settings between 0 and 1, arbitrarily. And other such "user interface" issues.
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Because the "cheating" way to get things to run at runtime the easiest is to encode it to H264, and then hit the playback button. :-)
One thing I learned is how a lot of video-game models have baked-in shadows (especially 2d perspective games like fighting games). The sun is assumed to be coming from a certain direction. So any shadows created by the sun are "baked into" the texture itself, and no need to calculate it during runtime.
Other shadows remain dynamic (Ex: a lamp in the background may still cast a dynamic, runtime shadow). And the combination is enough to trick most people into thinking they have fully dynamic lightning.
Physically based rendering is mostly about ensuring that your models look the same across many different lighting conditions. IIRC, something like Toy Story "cheated" by having the artists change the lighting settings between scenes.
While Wreak it Ralph is the famous Pixar Movie for using a singular "uber-shader" that worked in all situations across the movie.
https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_...
The "Principled" BSDF was mostly about making things easier to control for the artist. IE: Making settings between 0 and 1, arbitrarily. And other such "user interface" issues.
-------------
Because the "cheating" way to get things to run at runtime the easiest is to encode it to H264, and then hit the playback button. :-)
One thing I learned is how a lot of video-game models have baked-in shadows (especially 2d perspective games like fighting games). The sun is assumed to be coming from a certain direction. So any shadows created by the sun are "baked into" the texture itself, and no need to calculate it during runtime.
Other shadows remain dynamic (Ex: a lamp in the background may still cast a dynamic, runtime shadow). And the combination is enough to trick most people into thinking they have fully dynamic lightning.