Which render mode is closest to reality?

[CoolColJ]

Bidirectional MLT is probably the most robust of all the methods
It can find and render complex light paths better than the other ones

Except, it has a bit of bug regarding rendering of glass - it tends towards black edges, whereas rending with MLT alone does not produce this artifact. Sadly, rendering with MLT alone is also a lot slower than MLT BDir so you are still in the position of having to chose the right method to suit the scene.

I've been doing a lot of testing with water/caustics(as usual), and this uses specular material, and I haven't seen this issue here. Then again my water edges are tucked inside a wall

[pixie]

Bidirectional MLT is probably the most robust of all the methods
It can find and render complex light paths better than the other ones

Except, it has a bit of bug regarding rendering of glass - it tends towards black edges, whereas rending with MLT alone does not produce this artifact. Sadly, rendering with MLT alone is also a lot slower than MLT BDir so you are still in the position of having to chose the right method to suit the scene.

I've been doing a lot of testing with water/caustics(as usual), and this uses specular material, and I haven't seen this issue here. Then again my water edges are tucked inside a wall

Glass cups usually do the trick

[CoolColJ]

We all wait for the great Hybrid Method to come back to Indigo (announced by Ono some time ago!), so Indigo will combine MLT+PT in one rendering progress and choose the best algo for "materials/parts/whatever" of the scene

Hybrid mode seems to work in v2.4.3? I tried it, and it works fine, best of both worlds it seems. Samples per second might be 3 times slower than bidirectional path tracing, but I think it converges faster

[Zom-B]

Well, hybrid doesn't crash Indigo.... doesn't say that it "work" ^^
The problem is afaik a difference in the rendered result... hybrid was announced to be broken a long time ago!

This feature should be somewhere on Indigos Roadmap, but... yes... a lot things are