Question about lights ... a lot of lights

[folklore]

Hello there,
currently I've reworked an old project and have a question about how to proceed.
I got a fairground attraction with tons of lights. To get a good look of the lamps
I modelled the lamp (it has thickness) and put a point light inside.

Of course those lights do not really light up the scen, because they cant be too bright.
Otherwise the light bulbs get too bright. So is the only way to achieve a decent lighting
to copy each point light and place it outside the light bulb and exclude that light bulb from it?
how would that affect render times?

Or is there another way I do not think about?
Any help or thoughts welcome.

[viktor_angelov]

Hello folklore

What you are trying to achieve cannot be done with a standardized set-up. I would say you are on the right path.

Something that you can experiment with is Mesh Light. You can duplicate your lamp (maybe expand it a little so they do not overlap ) and then make it a Mesh Light. This might give you a more accurate result. More about it you can read here: https://docs.chaos.com/display/VC4D/Mesh+Light