Per-face Geometry/Ray mask

[Sharpe__Brian]

Hi Intel

Currently in our renderer, materials can affect the geometry/ray mask  (ie what is set via rtcSetGeometryMask())

I'm working on having per-face materials at the moment, which means that different faces in a mesh can require a different mask.  Because the geometry/ray mask can only be set on a mesh as a whole, I'm having to break it up into chunks (with each chunk representing faces that share the same mask),  which is adding more complexity to my renderer than I would have liked.

Have you ever considered allowing for a per-face mask? 
Do you think there would/could be performance issues?

Thanks!
Brian Sharpe

[SvenW_Intel · Accepted solution]

I think per primitive masks is a reasonable feature, I added it to our list. With current Embree you do not need to break up your geometry into chunks, you can also implement per-primitive masking using intersection filters. You just make the mask test in the filter and reject the hit if it fails the mask test.

[Sharpe__Brian]

Ok, I'll try the intersection filter and see which is faster.
Thanks for the info Sven