Animated lights

[grasshopper]

Can someone help me? Whats the best way to renders animated lights.?

I know i can't used saved IRR & LC.

If i just hard net render without saved Light maps it i get some fickering in the lighting and especially in the Anti Aliasing.

The scene is from a drivers perspective driving in a city at night.

Cheers
Any suggestions appreciated

[percydaman]

well do you really have to use GI? Id use a dome light and AO, but then I dont know exactly what your scene is about.

[grasshopper]

Thanks Percy but excuse my stupidity whats AO? I'm sure it's something obvious but i'm drawing a blank. GI would be nice i'd rather use it if i could.

The animation is set at night from a drivers perspective and the designers want to see how car head lights cast light apon proposed buildings as it travels over bridges and bumps.

Could the flickering be reduced if i convert to editable meshes? or is there a better AA setting i could use for animation, I'm was using Adaptive Subdiv but am now trying adaptive QMC to see if it imporves it.

Can anyone suggest the best filter setting aswell?

[aphex79]

AO = ambient occlusion

[grasshopper]

Ah ha, Ambient occlusion, of course. Never used it.

I have read a few things about it but never had the time or the project to try it maybe now is the time. Any tips

[percydaman]

flickering can be caused by many things. you would need to perform some troubleshooting to see whats causing it exactly. Could be both GI AND AA. Generally I would say irradiance maps just aren't all that great for animations with moving objects/lights. The settings required to remove flickering would cause render times in excess of just using qmc/qmc.

[grasshopper]

Qmc/qmc is either very noisy or very slow so not really an option.

Is there a technique for rendering with moving objects and lights using saved light maps?

[DanielBrew]

Grasshopper,

I think you can use saved IR + LC.

If all the other lights (not car headlights) in your scene are static you can set those to store with irradiance map + LC and just animate the car's headlights which should not be stored. This should be quicker and less and flickery than QMC + QMC.

Dan

[grasshopper]

Nice one, just to get this straight tho cause i want to render over the weekend.

I need to set all light except the car lights to store with irradiance map.

Then can i set both primary & secondary bounce to LC and Save it to file?

Then set GI Bounce one to IRR and save that to file?

Turn the headlight back on

Then net render the frames through backburner?

Sorry for the uncertainty but i've always had static scenes up until now.

[percydaman]

i think what he means is turn off the animated lights for the creation of the irradiance map. Then turn them back on for the final render sequence. They will additively be added to the render, but wont add to any actual GI lighting. At least Im thinking thats what hes thinking.

[DanielBrew]

Yes, as Percy said.

He's also right you won't get any GI lighting off your headlights but I'm sure you could fake it with fill lights or do without as headlights are mainly a direct light.

Dan

[grasshopper]

That sounds like the perfect compromise guys i'll give it a go.
Thanks for the input guys i didn't know you could add lights after the IRR creation.

Thanks again Greg

[DanielBrew]

Well I hope it works for you!

i didn't know you could add lights after the IRR creation.

The direct lighting from Max's standard lights (omnis, spots etc.) doesn't get saved with the IR map ever. Their contribution to the GI solution is but the direct component is always calculated at render time. Only VRay lights with 'store with irradiance' checked have their direct lighting stored.

Dan