Setting up the global illumination of a plant

A plant, like any object rendered by NDunes, has a global illumination applied to it to take into consideration the relighting from other scene elements that'll interact with the plant's shading.

Therefore, we use a simple global illumination setup which is calculated in real-time. The scattering conditions of a plant will determine its global illumination and we have one single option that can control the effect of the plant's global illumination. This is illustrated in the image below:

If we setup a simple biome using that plant, we can see how the GI multiplier setting will interact with the overall result we get: we can darken our image or make it look bright. The GI will tend to be stronger in dense leaves areas:

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Default GI on the left, multiplier set to x3 on the right

Calculating the ambient occlusion of a plant

Transitioning from plants meshes to prisms