Dermis Shader: Branched Path vs Path

Dermis Shader: Just a quick test scene showing the differences between the branched path tracing and path tracing modes in Cycles in Blender. As far as I understand it at the moment, this happens because the path tracing mode, which only has one path branch per sample, only samples one shader per sample, and the node setup for dermis contains more than one shader. It chooses which one to sample at random, where as branched will sample ALL shaders per sample, and add the results up accordingly, leading to a brighter scene with less powerful lights than in path mode: It’s important to note that the path side’s light is significantly brighter (3x I think) than the branched side, otherwise the render setup is identical. Without bumping up the light brightness the scene is too dark to see. That means the path side is a higher contrast image, i.e. there is a greater difference between the brightest part of the specular highlight and the darkest part of the shadows than on the branched side, and that’s why the highlights are different. Path is also faster to render, since it’s sampling less parts of the scene/shaders per overall pixel sample.