Help! I have to animate a huge building!

[phile_forum]

It's a monster. The building is 120m across, four storeys tall.

The client wants a fly-through of one floor. There are plenty of windows but the building is quite wide so natural light doesn't always make it right to the middle so i will need to put illumination inside.

What would be the best way to tackle it? Photonmap? Lightmap? LW lights or luminous polys for the interior lighting? Are there any tricks for boosting "ambient" light deeper inside the building without using too many extra light sources?

Given that the area covered is enormous but I'll only see a small part at any one time, should I trust Kray to select a GI resolution or should I set one myself? If so, what would be a good resolution to start at? How many photons would you suggest? (I'm not expecting definitive answers, but I'm sure there are people here with a better idea of where to start than me, at least).

If I generate a shared GI file for, say, every 5th frame using just one machine, can I then render on multiple machines using, say, virtualrender by sharing the GI file between all the machines?

Of course, I need to keep render times to a minimum too. Tricky problem really.

Many thanks for any help!

Phil

[jure]

Lightmap and Photonmap both have advantages and drawbacks. Lightmaps makes better photon distribution because it shoots them only where camera is but photonmap makes better shadow quality. If you're going to try photonmaps then be sure to use lightportals to guide photons where you need them.

For interior use LW lights, spot, area or whatever works for you.
To get even more light you can use photon multiplier on photons tab. This will bounce more light than it's physicaly accurate but I achieved very good results never the less.

Set GI res manualy, start at 1m and lower if shadows are too blurry.

Gi sharing should work the way you described. I think you can even try without VirtualRender and just use many computers to render same scene with same LOAD GI file.

good luck!

[darickster]

be sure to use lightportals to guide photons where you need them.

sorry for my ignorance jure, but how would you set that up for an exterior render?

[phile_forum]

Thanks Jure, I'll get some experimenting done!

Gi sharing should work the way you described. I think you can even try without VirtualRender and just use many computers to render same scene with same LOAD GI file.

I only have one LW seat. Can I render on multiple machines using Kray.exe? If so, where do I get it?

Cheers,

Phil

[jure]

be sure to use lightportals to guide photons where you need them.

sorry for my ignorance jure, but how would you set that up for an exterior render?

Instead of assinging 100% importance in lightportal shader you give it something lower like 80% or so... So 20% of photons will still be traced globaly.

[jure]

be sure to use lightportals to guide photons where you need them.

sorry for my ignorance jure, but how would you set that up for an exterior render?

Instead of assinging 100% importance in lightportal shader you give it something lower like 80% or so... So 20% of photons will still be traced globaly.

You can use LW in demo mode on other computers. Kray will still work.

[phile_forum]

You can use LW in demo mode on other computers. Kray will still work.

Excellent: a chance to install 9.5 on a secondary machine and have a look at it! (can't risk upgrading from 9.3.1 on my working machine when I'm right in the middle of this!)

Thanks again!

P.