night view of residential hirise

[prateekvishwa]

Hello Guys,
Hope you all are doing well! I am currently working on a residential high rise project. I had absolutely no problem achieving desired results in a day light render but making a night view is becoming quite challenging. Client doesn't want an evening shot which means I need to show the windows lit. Not sure if placing light behind each window will be a good idea. On top of that, to bring variation means those lights cannot be the instances! I tried placing lights behind a couple of windows ( see attached) but it is looking very cartoonish.. Also, I want to avoid filling 3d details as there are way too many windows and it is going to make the scene super heavy.. But if that is the only way to achieve then i may do.. Any better suggestions?

[glorybound]

There was a script being talked about that does this for you. It put a random illuminated room being each window. I am not sure what happened to the development.

[piotrus3333]

quick&dirty 5 minutes solution - big invisible VRayLight plane (or planes) with any kind of procedural tile texture.

edit: need something more fancy - use bercon with random texture per tile.

[Pixelcon]

There is that OSL shader which will map a perspective-correct image to each window, but the fastest, possibly easiest, probably best looking is to either map one of these to a plane behind the facade, or just photoshop it.

[damaggio]

You could also make some simple rooms , just for future night projects, no lights needed.

[prateekvishwa]

Thank you for your suggestions guys! I explored several ways.. the moment i map interior images by any tech, client focus goes on the interior details & then issues like- details not matching with interior layout etc etc cropped up. Final i have managed with the self illuminated planes.. Attached is what client approved.