As we all know, Arnold has many unique features up to this point. However, Arnold's Global Illumination is considered the weaker than many 3D renderers currently on the market. Other renderers always tend to update the latest technologies into the core, giving the fastest results and the highest image quality. We need to face the truth in order to develop better. You can look at these comparison results to see clearly.
Therefore, I would like to propose a solution. There is no need to rewrite Arnold from the ground. Just allow operators to work with raydepth. Then everything will be solved. In essence, it would be similar to the "Indirect" parameter in Arnold sky (or all light types). But instead of boosting GI the same for every raydepth step, it would be boosted depending on how we adjust it via Each raydepth step. I believe and hope that Arnold dev can create a curve to adjust the level of GI enhancement depending on what the user wants.
* And Effectiveness
Look at this example: In Blender, with the same raydepth settings, but boosted exponentially, it gives a very different results, much more realistic and convincing.
You can watch entire this 3 min tutorial here for reference :
3 Minutes to Perfect Clouds in Blender 3D + Free Ultra HQ Cloud VDB Pack (youtube.com)
The test file :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NX30lT1tELIIQmb83saCYwMuvmXyVlfL/view?usp=sharing
*** And THis post is about Indirect lighting in general ( Diffuse/ refraction,, ). Not only for volume
Thank you so much for listening to me seriously !!!
