Vray and speed

[Da_elf]

ah. the model could be riddled with problems and hence be one of the reasons things are rendering so slowly as well

[cristoforo]

How can I post a 3ds export file here? What is the difference between using the environment light and vray area lights in every window opening? I am still not able to get rid of the black splotches on the chairs...even after unifying normals. Rendering without the furniture got rid of the black splotches on the base board. I did a test animation, but it was from 2.5 to 6 minutes per frame. The 6 minutes is a bit of a problem...considering also that this is a very simple scene. Is the irradiance map/light cache the best combo to use for animations? Which would be the best image sampler to use? Now I am working on an exterior scene which seems to be going quite well.....only tips to know about exterior scenes?

[xenry]

cristoforo try www.rapidshare.de

[cristoforo]

Thanks.

For Flipside and Tony I've posted a 3ds file of the scene here. Is this what you intended saying 3ds export file? Hope so, if not let me know. Thanks again for your help.
http://rapidshare.de/files/3800452/villa.3ds.html

[flipside]

Your scene is filled with modeling errors.

Single sided surfaces: give it thickness (the floors, walls without thickness, windows, etc...) This is really bad for GI calculations.

Your standing lamp is split in 2 pieces, and the inside its normals are facing the wrong way. The small ceiling light is very weird, nothing has thickness there I think. Also the fan is wrong.

The chairs surfaces have no thickness. Even your table and glass have no thickness.

The most important thing when you want to render photorealistic things, is that you need to model realistic also. Nothing in real life has zero thickness.

First fix the modeling, then continue with the lighting

Good luck,

wouter

[cristoforo]

Thanks Wouter.

I've always modelled with surfaces which was very good to have less faces in the scene with standard lights. I guess I have to start thinking "thickness!!"

[flipside]

Yes especially with flat surfaces, the face count won't go up that much if you make it thick.

I would also place some vraylights (with not too high multiplier) in the room because the window is rather small. To fully illuminate the room a little help from some vraylights inside the room will be usefull.

Here's a small test I did:

Vraylight in the window, and in the room above the table, and also in the other room to light that up a bit. All vraylights have the 'store with IR map' option turned on so their light is calculated by the ir map also (this speeds up the actual rendering because there are no raytraced area shadows now):
5m54s (ir map calculation and lightcache included)



This one has all the lights with the 'store' option turned off:
Longer rendertime but better shadow detail:
7m26s (ir map calculation and lightcache included)


Load them both in an image viewer to swap so you can see the difference better.

[cristoforo]

Much lower rendering time. Is it better to use a vray light in the windows instead of the environment light? How do you avoid the glow that I have on the window frame around the window? On the light above the fan I used the vray light material, but it seems to be way too strong at the source. Originally I had an omni there, with unfortunately the same undesired washed out effect at the source. With that light I should no longer have to put the vray light on the ceiling like you say, correct? This sample here at 720x486 took 30 min. Still seems a quite bit compared to yours. I really appreciate you looking at my file. Thanks a lot!

[flipside]

The blown out area on your celing is there because so much light needs to enter trough the window to lighten up the whole room. If you would take a picture of a room like that it would also have this blown out area. So you need to use some tricks. Photographers use light cards to bounce around the light more in dark areas. You can do the same by using invisible vray plane lights.

A vray light in the window is usefull to control how much light enters the room, and it gives raytraced shadows which are more detailed that shadows coming from skylight only (which is calculated with ir map).

send me your email trough PM and I will send you my max file