What about multiple importance sampling and HDRIs?

Some time ago I've seen a video where the artist used an HDRI together with Multiple Importance Sampling for the illumination of a table with a place setting (among this a water glass with caustics) .  When do I need this? Could you please explain the technical background closer?
  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    Hey, good question! That used to be super important in 2.79, but in 2.8 it's handled automatically for worlds. 

    You could mess with changing the Map Resolution, where higher values give less noise but take more memory and render more slowly, but having it on Auto works great pretty much all the time. I have yet to run into an exception. 

  • Ingmar Franz(duerer) replied

    So, do I see it right, that Multiple Importance Sampling is always turned on for the background since 2.8 and only the map resolution can be set (either automatically or manually with a user defined value)?

  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    Yep!