Helicopter hovering over long grass

[Morne]

Hi all

I have a helicopter that will be hovering over long grass like in the bushveld in africa. For GI I'm thinking of IRmap prepass animation mode together with lightcache with flythrough mode. 2 or 3 days ago however I read somewhere Vlado mentioned not to use flythrough mode in lightcache for moving objects. Any suggestions here? Also any recommendations for making the grass keeping in mind rendering should not flicker or take forever. (The grass will blow like nuts from the downdraft of the helicopter)

Regards,
Morne

[joconnell]

I'd probably use brute force for the primary and lc in single frame for the secondary - for something out in the open it should speed through really quickly - even doing brute force for both should be pretty quick since most of the rays from the sky are going to never bounce more than once.

P.s. - no idea on that pic viewer thing - I never use it :/

[Neilg]

Cant max's hair and fur work with the atmospherics?

If so, just do the grass with that and use 'convert to geometry at render time'.

[Morne]

Cant max's hair and fur work with the atmospherics?

If so, just do the grass with that and use 'convert to geometry at render time'.

Hmmm I'll have to look into it

I'd probably use brute force for the primary and lc in single frame for the secondary - for something out in the open it should speed through really quickly - even doing brute force for both should be pretty quick since most of the rays from the sky are going to never bounce more than once.

P.s. - no idea on that pic viewer thing - I never use it :/

I also have some shots of the helicopter and of a jet flying over some landscape. In both instances there will be an attempt to shoot them down with shoulder launch missile (probably with afterburn for the smoke). Would you suggest brute force and lc in single frame here also?

[joconnell]

Yep - they should get you pretty quick frames either way - the lighting conditions for an object hovering over ground or flying in the sky are pretty simple - the top gets hit by the sky and the bottom gets hit by one bounce of gi as compared to the inside of a house where light is scattering all over the place and you need a tonne of bounces to fill it out. That friend of mines plane film was lit with a skylight pass, a directional light and some omnis underneath the plane to simulate light bouncing off the desert - it's an easy one for a renderer to deal with in this case.

[tom182]

@John, that was 'A Lonely Sky' correct? classic piece of work

[joconnell]

Yep - he's doing another one at the moment about wwII fighter pilots - looks great.