super gnu:
why not try my method using the “use irradiance map” checkbox in the vray material? actually dont know if this has an equivalent in maya…
just hide your character/moving objects and calculate flythrough lightcache/multiframe imap for the overall scene.
then unhide your animated geometry, and make sure you go through all the materials on your animated geometry, turning off “use irradiance map”
now set the imap and lightcache to “from file” and specify your saved files.
when you now render, the bg and static objects will use the saved imap, but the objects with “use irradiance map” unticked in their materials will use brute force GI, based on the static lighcache covering the surrounding geometry.
you get solid static gi on your scene and perframe brute force gi only on the moving elements.
you can control the quality of the brute force gi by either adjusting the imap hsph. subdivs ( which dont affect the precalculated imap) or using the gi subdivs multiplier in the object properties of your moving objects.
i apologise if the terminology doesnt match entirely, im a max user.
the only downsides are a) no gi effect from the moving object on the background and related to this, b) no nice gi contact shadow under your characters feet. this can be resolved by using ambient occlusion, either in the gi settings globally, or as a seperate pass.
This is really interesting, so i do what i’ve alredy done for the static objects (and so Flythrought LC and multiframe IR) and then yes, there is a “Use Irradiance Map” for the Vray shaders also in Maya (i’ve used Vray on Max and really there aren’t big differences) and then what make Vray use the brute force for the “unchecked” objects? Using Brute Force as a secondary rays engine?