faking ceiling lights in skyscraper to reduce render times?

[rmehta]

I have a model of a skyscraper into which I've put many rectangular lights to simulate interior lighting and add perspective. This looks great but takes forever both to render and calculate the irradiance map for. I used lights because I knew I could get them to appear as pure white, regardless of any other scene lighting.

Is there a trick to make some rectangles appear pure white, so I don't have to create many many lights?

[andreas]

Re: faking ceiling lights in skyscraper to reduce render times?

have you tried emitter materials?

i use them all the time to create ceiling lights...

best regards


Andy

[rmehta]

Re: faking ceiling lights in skyscraper to reduce render times?

Just did test - render times using emissive materials were exactly the same for those with rect. lights!

[rmehta]

Re: faking ceiling lights in skyscraper to reduce render times?

I suppose one way to do it is to make the lights simple white rectangles and render them by themselves and combine in photoshop...

[dalomar_cg]

Re: faking ceiling lights in skyscraper to reduce render times?

Have you tried the Store With Irradiance Map option with the lights? Many times that speeds up the over all render process. Also, if you decrease the sampling and turn off the shadows then you can speed things up that way too...