closed interior without GI

[kimgar]

i'm trying to achieve a 'neutral' ambient occlusion kind of lighting of a closed space without windows and GI, for quick animation purposes
The scene is just a camera in a box with flipped normals and cast shadows ticked off.

i've tried various lighting conditions, omnis, vray spheres, planes and
domes, i've even tried a combination of blends and lightmaterials
but i just can't seem to pull this off - either the floor/roof become darker than the walls or the other way around.



i am out of ideas, does anyone have any tips for me?

[vlado]

Use VRayDirt on the materials.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kimgar]

ah yes, i've been fiddling with the dirt in the color slot of a vRayLightMtl, that gives me a nice smooth AO kind of lighting:



my problem is that i could only get this to work with plain colors.
i've tried to blend a vRayMtl with a lightMtl + dirt, now the material properties are there, but i've lost the diffuse color:



i'm not sure how to go about this, i kind of feel like i'm doing things backwards...any thoughts?

[plastic_]

try a standard material with vraydirt in the self-illumination slot

[Morbid Angel]

actually Im faced with rendering a complex interrior without gi aswell. I think, that the most reasonable way is to mimic light travel through out the scene with area lights. For example have a area light in the window, then a couple of area lights inside with very subdle intensity to simulate bounce from the walls etc, and probably a few custom linked lights to bring out some objects, which would be obviously lit by the bounce or whatever. Not a fun thing to do I must say...

[kimgar]

excellent plastic, that works!
hmm, with a standard mtl, vrayMap in reflection slot, glossiness set to 1000(can that be right?) and 8 subdivs there's a 30 sec speed increase, that might just be worth it.

133 sec. standard mtl, without GI


161 sec. vRay mtl, with GI


not sure why, but i feel more comfortable using vrayMtls rather than standards...i was hoping some kind of vRayBlendMtl combo would work, but i had no luck with that

morbid: yep, that would be another way to fake bounces. but i've got minimal skills and knowledge about interior lighting, so i'm not even going to consider that approach
look on the bright side - at least you have some windows to work with

would be great to see how your bounce faking is turning out

[kimgar]

yey, it turned out kind of cool, rendered out quickly and smoothly without GI, there's a small vid here for anyone interested :

http://www.indok.no/filetransfer/temp/LightMat.wmv

[jujubee]

Hah. That's pretty cool.