This is my first interior in years. I had used Lightsacpe a long time ago but abndoned it because it was so slow. Now i am giving Vray a shot for an interior lobby with over 50 lights that all have IES files.
My question is this: How do people go in to render test a scene when the render takes multiple hours? there is no way i can render, wait forever, tweak, re-render, wait forever, tweak etc and i am guessing that people doing interiors with vray don’t do that either so any advice would be helpful.
Thanks.
mh
You can also get your lighting correct by using all grey materials first. This will give a good generalization of overall lighting. Then you can save the irr map and the LC for material test renderings and whatever. Then do final tweeking at the end using small regions instead of the full view.
What is a big time factor , is that you use ies files. In some cases, it isnt nessesair, to use them.
for getting nice light patterns, if this is your aim, you can use a projectionmap, with a gradient ramp in your light projectionslot, to get comparable results in much less time.
well if it´s nessesair to use ies, … ies is slow.
otherwise also use render region, and like told low general qmc settings, disabling reflections in the gernerals settings maybe, grey override material.
From my personal experience, I have found that the IES lights get extremely slow with the shadows. So far, I only use them with < Shadow map > type.
Keep in mind that this shadow, doesn’t take into consideration the materials, it just reacts on geometry.
Some IES files renders faster than other, I do no know if that is the way they are buildt, but some of them can be as fast as a standard light
From my personal experience, I have found that the IES lights get extremely slow with the shadows. So far, I only use them with < Shadow map > type.
You can achieve acceptable results with Vray shadows, but without area shadows click, so crisp shadows, but quite fast. As you have 50+ of them, the light beams could interfeer together, and the result still be ok.
thanks for all the feedback.
What i have encountered is this.
1. Vray renders the IES lights incorrectly. They render as if there is something physically blocking off part of the light. (mental ray has no problem with them.)
2. vray does not render instanced IES lights. When i have 6 lights all instanced from one light, Vray only renders one of theose lights. (Mental Ray has no problem with all of them)
3. Vray does not render photometric lights that are not IES. (Mental ray has no problem with them.)
So, i have to wonder if there is some switch in amongst the million or so switches in Vray that i am not hitting or is this just the way it is.
I am using Vray version Adv 1.46.15.
mh
I’ll try rotating…have no idea why instanced don’t work…
Also it appears that “light Lister” does not recognize Vray lights. I started another test scene, popped in a vray light, instanced it around added another vray light, opened up light Lister and none where there.
mh
No, I dont think the light lister currently does show vraylights. One large reason I rarely use it. People have posted scripts that work similiarly on the forum.
Patrick,
The occlusion is not a shadow occlusion. It is the light being blocked. It’s a case of Vray’s inability to read IES files where Mental ray has no problem with the IES files. Because of that i have abandoned Vray for any interior scenes and am concentrating on Mental Ray.
mh
I wouldn’t be abandoning vray just yet. I actually took another hard look at this new version of mental ray in MAX 9…funny how they totally ripped off all the VRay UI ideas (which i’m happy about) it still doesn;t even come close in speed. I will say that i wish there was an arch + design like material in vray with all the presets…its very easy to use. I would take a look around at some of the interior work by some of these guys to judge whether or not you should be dumping vray for mental ray…especially for the sole reason IES files may not be rendering properly. Its your perogative but i wold suggest more paractice and patience. The guys around here will help fget it figured out!!
Dwayne,
Dumping vray for interiors doesn’t mean dumping vray for everything. I am “wowed” by how fast vray renders proxy 3d trees and love the vray displacement for ground covers. I just finished up an exterior animation that vray sailed thru.
I’ve seen the interiors on the vray forum and have been very unimpresssed with the times people log in for a vray interior. A lot of the times are just hobby stuff, not what one could use commercially unless you have a large render farm to tap into.
The quality of vray and mental ray are the same from what i have seen on various forums and the speed they render is dependent on the individuals familiarity with the specific renderer.
My observations are that whatever Vray can produce for interiors mental ray can also and vice versa. Mental ray people look at the speeds that vray people talk about and say they can get better speeds. vray people make the same claim.
All i know is Mental ray does NOT work with “Forest” which i use on my exteriors so i use vray for exteriors.
Vray has problems with IES lights, Mental ray doesn’t so I’ll choose mental ray for the times when i do an interior that needs GI.
And scanline has things that neither of those two have so i use scanline for other instances.
mh