Transparent bounce in Cycles: bounces counting

posted to: Light Path Bounces

There're three transparent bounces with the "Transparency Bounces" maximum number set to 2: The area of the third bounce (after which some rays hit the light emitting world background) is marked with a red arrow in the image below:

Bounces counting in Cycles starts at zero (please see the "Cycles Encyclopedia" by Frederik Steinmetz and Gottfried Hoffmann)


  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    I should recommend that book underneath a few of these lessons. It's a great resource for things like this! 

  • Ingmar Franz(duerer) replied

    Yes, needed to read these chapters several times in order to get it rigth because you really need to concentrate since the scenarios can get quit complex. And I often have to come back to  "Cycles Encyclopedia"  I'm looking forward to a new edition covering the changes in Cycles. And hopefully there will also be an "EEVEE Encyclopedia"  as well 😉. Things like for example "Multiple Importance Sampling" that appears in the context of lights, emission objects and environment textures is partly still confusing to me.  I need to illustrate things with an image in order to understand what's going on.

  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    You really should give graphics programming a shot if you haven't already. You're already digging into these things far more than most artists care to know, and I think you'd be a natural!