VrayAmbientLight to reduce GI flicker

[sea2stars]

I'm trying to reduce the flickering in a huge forest, while also reducing my precalc/rendering times.

I can't find any documentation on the VrayAmbientLight and I was wondering if the following approach would negate the flicker issue and allow me to lower my rendering settings?
-Add a VrayAmbientLight to the scene with a VraySun as the light map
-Completely excluding the forest object from the GI calculations
-Exclude all objects from the VrayAmbientLight except the forest
-Add VrayDirt to the forest texture to add some detail

Would this also shrink the size of my IRR and LC files?

[jacksc02]

I have done exactly this for an animation and it worked really well.
You might have to play with the vraysky settings a little to get the same look as GI

[sea2stars]

Awesome. Thanks for the reply!

I'm trying to redo an old animation, replacing opacity mapped planes with full meshed trees, but the overhead on my limited render farm was a bit much.

[jacksc02]

Are the trees proxies?

[sea2stars]

Nope. There are only a few variants in a ForestPro object so there isn't much point in using proxies. In the original video you start off by "falling" towards an aerial view of a rendered site plan that then fades into the actual model.

[duke2]

I've had some luck feeding the light map a composite texture - your HDR or VraySky as the first layer, and VRayDirt as second layer in Multiply mode.

[sandykoufax]

Interesting approach. Can I see a result of this method ?

[duke2]

Not today. I just finished a 2 month stint of 12hour+ days without weekends. Tomorrow will be my first day off and i'm planning on napping.

[sandykoufax]

No problem. take your time.
I'll do my tests with this method later.

[sandykoufax]

Recently, I've tested this method and I'm very satisfied.
Moreover, rendertime is improved too.


Here is the comparision
I used the same render setting and applied the same(maybe) color correction.

This one is old version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Kvsejnn_w

This one is new version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcfjd_iex4

You can see the difference of the tree flicker of the first camera view. (I just re-rendered only first view camera)

[Morne]

on 360 it looks the same to me

[sandykoufax]

on 360 it looks the same to me

What it means '360' ? youtube 360p?
you can see it with 720p

[Morne]

yes youtube 360p
will look again at 720p

[vlado]

An off-topic question, but how do you guys upload videos at 720p on youtube? Everything I've uploaded ends up looking horrible, even though the original .mov file looks very well.

Best regards,
Vlado

[sandykoufax]

Ah? I just uploaded 1280x720 clip. There is no other things to do. But in case of 720p, it's not good as original.