Internal lighting test

[LarsSonparsson]

I also had to test the new grid based lighting with GI. I just love it, but I had to be really careful with the settings to keep rendering time down. I mean, 50-70 mil. grids per explosion. If those are generating lights from 10% reduced grid and having 32 subdivisions, that was too much for the largest and brightest frames. Slowest frames were 4-6 hours. Now with the reduced settings 5% and 16 subdivs it renders just fine (max 1.5h), but there is some visible artifacts.

Gi settings are also quite low, so some light leaks could come from there.

Settings:

[jacksc02]

very nice!

[Ivaylo Katev]

good job man!
can you give more info, sim time, render time etc...

[LarsSonparsson]

I had one problem with the scene.
Because every explosion has it's own simulator, they are simulated at different starting frames. Like first one 10-250 and next 35-250... 68-250 etc. Now if I try to render frame 50, vray won't render anything because latest simulator doesn't have any data for that frame. I think it should skip it and not hang the whole render. Bug or feature?

Max 2012, vray 2.4, almost latest Phoenix nightly.

[Ivaylo Katev]

well, but the latest simulator have no data and will be not rendered, what exactly is wrong?
edit: do the simulators have the same settings? the first explosion looks less detailed compared to the last one. this may be just the source of course

[LarsSonparsson]

The problem is that the vray refuses to render at all. Nothing happens. In frame 50 there still is the whole scene with two other explosions.

And yes, the first one has different settings.

[Ivaylo Katev]

i see, a bug with no doubt.
well, and how you did a workaround for this?

[LarsSonparsson]

Well I had to simulate all from frame zero for the first time. They are using adaptive grid, so it was quite fast.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hi, great job! I'm really happy to see the grid-illumination in action

I believe that the speed can be improved - the grid-based self-illumination and reduced grid light placing can work together and help VRay to light the surroundings faster.

I'll have a look at the rendering bug and keep you posted

[TSR_trix]

Nice one Lasse!
I see we are going to get a proper internal lighting at last.

[LarsSonparsson]

Thank you Tommi.

Svetlin: The biggest problem for me is always the domelight/environment lighting. This simulation renders really fast with direct light and internal lighting, but if I want to have any skylight, thats where the problem starts. Domelight is no go. AO doesn't work with Phoenix. So only option was to render it with GI on. So if you find any solution for that...

[Ivaylo Katev]

dome/sky light is really slower, because many rays are traced.
there is no honest way to make it fast, but some fake tool like occlusion map may help.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hmm, alrighty, I'll have a look But now, unfortunately, I can't reproduce the issue.
Can you try with the very latest nightly, or send me the scene?
There was a bug a couple of days ago that sounds related, but can't get it to break here.

[LarsSonparsson]

PM with the link sent.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Nice, was the same thing I was thinking about - it was fixed with the nightly from 14 Nov.

It also helped me catch a problem when the GPU preview is enabled and the input path is missing