Maya Render Comparisons
A small study on the render times of different shaders with and without an emissive light on going through two different glass materials.
Glass and emissive materials tend to be the bane of a VFX artist’s existence. Emissive materials tend to be inefficient on resources with how they project light and Glass adds another layer of calculation to a light path’s lifetime.
As you can see, turning off the lights for Arnold and Maya with varying materials typically doubled the render time. Finding ways to fake emissive surfaces and replacing them with a point light or spot light in projects is the best way to improve efficiency.