Best method for exterior animation...

[jtiscareno]

Do you guys have any suggestions on the best and most efficent method for using saved light maps for an exterior animation. I have followed and used the method for interiors using IRR Map and Light Cache map from the tutorial: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R...ials_imap2.htm and its worked great!

In my original still images settings I am using Irradience and QMC but when I saved the irr map in incremental mode and then used the saved map file for the animation it came out all funny, with blotches and stuff, so I was wandering, do I need to use both, the light cache first and then irr map second just like in the tut??

Thanks

[Clifton Santiago]

So you are saying you are trying to re-use the IR map you calculated for an IR/LC animation, with stills but using IR/QMC? I believe you would want to recalculate your IR map for the stills because the IR map for the animation will have the LC information stored in it as well.

[jtiscareno]

No, I have not done an animation yet, I did a small test just calculating the IR map with a QMC as secondary and it looked all funky. So my question is did I did something wrong, can we just calculate and use a saved IR map and QMC as second for a nice smooth animation or do I need to calculate light cache on first and second and the calcualte IR Map and use saved IR and LC of first and second???

What I want to do since the lighting came out fine on the stills using IR for first and QMC for secondis to reuse them for the animation, now do I save the IR map? Does it produce funly spots? Do I just run IR and QMC without saving any lights maps and let the frames run raw?

Thanks

[Clifton Santiago]

Okay, I think I understand your question...

You can use either IR/LC or IR/QMC (as well as other combinations) for animations. With IR maps you want to precalc the lighting pass every Nth frame on a single machine (to prevent flickering), and re-use it for the render pass. Using LC or QMC for your secondary bounces is a matter of preference. You will most likely want to use secondary LC for interiors.

The secondary LC pass info will be saved with the IR map, so you don't need to re-use it unless you are using LC for glossies.

Have you done Vlado's interior animation tutorial? Its all in there. Also, I recommend you get Chris Nichols Gnomon vray exteriors DVD for more animation advice.