Thank you for this thread, so much info to digest.
I have a problem though when I try to bake one of test scenes posted here: the Swarm Agent log shows something not very promising:
21:32:42: Couldn’t gather the requested number of indirect photon paths! 0 gathered
21:32:42: EmitDirectPhotons complete, 0.000 million photons emitted in 0.1 seconds
21:32:42: EmitIndirectPhotons complete, 0.000 million photons emitted in 0.1 seconds
21:32:42: Marking Irradiance Photons complete, 0.000 million photons marked in 0.1 seconds
Sometimes it bakes and sometimes not and it just fails.
Does anyone know why it can happen?
4.12.5, gtx 680, 64gb ram