Advice wanted for rendering a city scene, 8km in size

[nvanherpt]

Hi

Im doing a city scene, massive 8 kilometers worth. Lightcache seems to not to want to work as the estimated time just goes crazy and ramps right up to 600 hours.

Have got 5mil polys so far and that's just the previz, so obviously I'll have to cut up the scene. There's going to be a ton of bitmaps too and look out, we want lotsa reflections as well. If there's anyone out there with helpful advice on rendering a scene like this it would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Nik

[percydaman]

good luck with that. Im currently working on something similiar. Using ALOT of xrefs, and very tight organization throughout. Anything that requires a very glossy reflection is faked using reflection mapping. Also splitting up light passes into several passes. Say a global GI, and then ALOT of local light passes, that have no GI enabled. I tried to stay away from (as much as possible) overbright surfaces (gi wrappers and such) as it causes alot of slowdowns.

Currently have about 15 cameras, each with roughly 8-10 passes. And this isn't splitting up the pass into diffuse, spec, and so on. Our scene is late dusk which complicates things exponentially.

Oh and if you dont use a scene organization tool like RPManager, check it out. I couldn't fathom sending out 150 passes to backburner individually.

[unknown]

Nik
vray light, dome, no GI, i find GI is a waste for large scenes, its great for bounced colour, interiors etc. wasted outside really. Give it a try.

night shots are different, you might need alot of light passes, as percy mentioned. but day ones are easy with a dome.

another way is a dome of spots, use domelight script, then an AO pass for faked GI, also another good solution, that doesnt look far off GI with a bit of colour tweaking.

Hope that helps

Tim

[nvanherpt]

hey thanks guys, i'll give the tips a good go.

i just managed to output a rendered preview tonight, had to kill everything, lights, mats, even vray. good old scanny huh.

[jreynolds]

Chris Nichols talks on the lighting of a scene like you're describing in his exteriors DVD.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/cni01.html

[jacksc02]

give up and go to the pub niko

[nvanherpt]

well, luckily i only have the one camera and the shot is only 200 frames.

the dome light seems to be doing the trick nicely, but we'll see what the directors think.

think i'll split the scene up into fore/middle/background when i'm happy with the lighting. will keep u posted.