Precalculated GI for fly-through animation

[Pixelo]

Hi All,
*
I'm working on a fly-through animation. I'm pre-calculating Light Cache & also Irradiance Map.

I have two questions about this :
- If i pre-calculate GI for let's say frames 0 -> 500, can i use these single .VRLMAP and .VRMAP files to render portions of the animation (for ex. frames 100 to 200).
- And will these .VRLMAP and .VRMAP files stay valid to render my scene if i attached some objets together ? (for ex. if GI was calculated with the concrete walls as 500 distinct objects, can i render if all the wall are the same but attached together as a single object ?)

If anyone has the answer to this, i would be grateful ! Thank you.

[NicoC]

Hello,

- I'd say yes for rendering portions of the animation, using pre-rendered GI solutions;
- about attaching objects together, I'm not 100% sure, but I think that can be ok - I mean, samples will be remain at the same place, since your object(s) won't be deformed. Again, I'm not sure at all about that ...

[Morbid Angel]

the new geometry will look weird with the recalculated solution, it will need to be recalculated each time new geometry added.

[Pixelo]

Hi,
I'm not talking about added geometry. The geometry stays the same but instead of being organized in multiple objects, it's now attached into a single object.
Are the GI samples positioned with absolute coordinates in space, or are they relative to objects, or "assigned" to objects ?
Thanks,

[Da_elf]

times like that that it would be quicker to just do a fast test than to wait for a reply. id like to think it would work but not sure how samples are assigned to objects

[Pixelo]

Hi all,
Yes i could do some test but i thought it could be interesting to know the theory behind all this (why it works or doesn't work).
Any chaosGroup staff could give us the answer ?
Thanks !

[Deflaminis]

There's a semi - decent write up here that I found useful. Doing tests as we speak...

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/v..._visualisation

[Neilg]

It should work fine. you can use the irmap viewer to see how the samples are organised - it contains information about orientation, position and values. being that it's got orientation, i doubt it needs to know about objects.