Vegitation

[glorybound]

What is the best way to handle heavy vegetation? I see a lot of things in the elements v-ray properties and I usually leave everything on by default. Is there anything in there that can speed up render times, like turning off GI? I see that the caustics are enables, but unless I have caustics enabled in the scene, I assume that this doesn't matter.

[Pixelcon]

As well all know you need to ensure your opacity maps are using filtering type : none.

You can also try turning off trace reflections on the leaf materials. Yes you can also turn off GI but your leaves might darken a bit. Why not just start testing?

[glorybound]

I always turn filtering off and turning off GI makes things almost black. I'll work with reflections.

[DPS]

Have you tried geometry leaves? They render faster than those that are opacity mapped.

You could ditch the leaf bitmaps if you're far enough from the camera. I've been happy with square leaves in the background as it's mainly about getting the right colour.

Obviously proxies will help with memory - itoo handles everything quite well.

[Teriander]

Try turning off Generate GI, but leave on Receive GI. This way the light will still hit your vegitation but wont create new GI.

[svetlozar.draganov]

You should definitely use VrayProxy functionality to prevent excessive RAM consumption.
Another tip is to decrease Max Transparency Levels and/or increase Transperency Cutoff if opacity-mapped vegetation is used.

[Morne]

you can remove them from GI and then fake its GI by using VRayAmbientLight

[squintnic]

does that even save much time?
seems like a weird workaround...

[svetlozar.draganov]

Depending on the complexity of the geometry and the amount of population calculating GI could take a lot of time so turning OFF Receive GI or excluding them completely from GI calculations could save a lot of time.

[Neilg]

The only thing you need to do is change reflection depth to 1, switch off refraction/translucency effects, drop it into a 2-sided material to get a similar effect and switch filtering off. Anything else either wildly changes the look or doesnt actually cut render times much.

[squintnic]

that's what i meant - the GI calculations on these things are generally pretty swift if using irr / lc.
seems like it would be a bit faster at the expense of having black trees!