hi there,
i’ve got a project where i’ve got to use lots of cove lighting and i cant decide wheter it’s better to use vray lights or self illuminated objects instead.
I’ve tried both ways but rendering times were horrible.
I rendered a 360*480 scene in 1.5 hrs on a 2.4 P4 with 512mb ram.
when using vray lights i checked the smooth surface shadows option only with a multiplier of 4 and 12 subdivisions.
and when using the self illuminated objects i used cylindirical objects imported from rhino directly(i dont know if hi-poly count effects).
any tips would be highly appreciated :?
Hi-poly deffinately makes a difference
Instead of putting cylinders in to represent flourescent tubes, try making just one plane of the cove itself self-illuminated…the surface that would be the back of the lighting sofet
hi thanks for the tip 
i’ve tried that and it surely did make a difference in rendering time.
but this time i have a slight problem of distributing the light in to the room since there is no other lights.
let’s see how i can get over with it.
thanks
Steller,
You can use this method as well. For this scene, I used serveral Instanced Omni lights very close together. The trick here is to seperate the geomtry into sections. For example, the cove ceiling, walls and the small wall between the main ceiling and the cove are all seperate. Set your omni lights with no shadows, include the objects listed above and play with the attenuation. I did this a while back I can see I should have placed the omni lights closer together. If you’re concerned about the task of placing the omni lights in the soffit, do what I did. I created a spline along the soffit and then used the spacing tool to set the lights in place, very fast. All around it is a pretty good fake and it will render fast.
Scott
http://www.drealm.net/vray/Cove-lighting.jpg
Thanks Smalerbi,
your solution looks cool. I’ll sure give it a try. my space is smallish and alligning omnis wont be an issue i guess.
i had a smallish bathroom only lit by the cove lights on one side of the space and i had problems distributing the light in whole space.
i did try the self illuminating inner faces way and it was ok overall.
thanks for all the interest
Stellar,
An added note on the “omni” method. You can scale the omni lights to make light distribution more elongated. When you’ve got attenuation turned on, you can see just how far out you’ve stretched your light.
Cove lighting in Vray is pretty tricky. I have yet to produce truly desireable results. Seems either geometry or vray lights burn out very close to the light source, and falloff way too soon. Omnis are not a bad idea. Don’t forget, max 6 also has a linear light which you can try.
John Pruden
Digital-X
yeah i’ve tried the linear light but it’s slow and it’s got some blow out issues on each end
i agree it is very very tricky if you try to use it for lighting and not for decorative purposes. even with color mapping the blown out areas become disturbing.