light tracer or Radiosity

[coastalhomedesigns]

we are going to being doing about 100 exteior home rendering. Everything is going to be set up as a base file with all the landscape & lighting set up. From there the models will be added and textured. Is it better to use light tracer or Radiosity for the lighting & rendering. The client does not care which one we use.

 

Do you feel one is just better than the other or do you do?

 

Thanks

Charles

[only3d]

1st of all- r u sure ur from the US? " we are going to being doing.." !?

man thats even worse than Bush ! but im just kidding with ya (-:

 

2 ur question- radiosity obviously will give the better and more convincing results but light tracer requires much less tweaking and messing arround.(and shorter rendering time if u cancel the shadow option)

of course its up 2 u and 2 the level of ur skills. personally id go w light tracer

or Vray, more likely.

 

thats my opinion, im sure ul get more from more experienced guys than me.

good luck!

[lambros]

I kind of agree, lightracer is a more straightforward solution. Just drop in a skylight, add direct lighting, and perhaps some fill lights and there you go. If you want to get the best resutls though, you will have to give a couple of bounces which will raise dramatically the render times. Rendering at 4K for example will often take 6-7 hours. Results are always appreciated by the clients though...

Radiosity is an option too, I have used it only once, in an animation, and it proved to be really fast: just calculate once and render all the frames you need. When it comes to static renders though, this advantage is lost. Using the regathering option will give much better results, but you will have to give it a couple more hours...

Vray is always of top quality if available!

[bigroo]

1st of all- r u sure ur from the US? " we are going to being doing.." !?

man thats even worse than Bush ! but im just kidding with ya (-:

 

2 ur question- radiosity obviously will give the better and more convincing results but light tracer requires much less tweaking and messing arround.(and shorter rendering time if u cancel the shadow option)

of course its up 2 u and 2 the level of ur skills. personally id go w light tracer

or Vray, more likely.

 

thats my opinion, im sure ul get more from more experienced guys than me.

good luck!

 

JUST A TIP (Not meant with any malice I might add)

 

I wouldn't mock the grammar of others, as they say people shouldn't throw stones in glasshouses. Just doing a simple spell check on your second answer alone shows up 19 errors including spelling, punctuation and grammar and that's not allowing for an incorrect recognition of id instead of I'd.

[Juan Altieri]

i think in practice radiosity is better for interior solutions, and lightracer for exterior....(too much simple)

[radioVOY]

if there is exterior images go for lightracer.

 

but if you want to try another ways may be you like to try a sky dome with one direct light, is a lot faster than lightracer and you get realistic results.

[only3d]

Bigroo

 

u count "id" as a spelling mistake?? come on man we all know u write differently on the web! this is not a formal letter 2 my anty..

 

anyways- 1st of all im not an american (as u can see on my nationality) and english is not my 1st language, so its only natural if i faulter (nice word no? :->) and 2nd- lighten up man it was all in good spirit! id never put down someone if i really thought he was thick its ok 2 joke around a little evry once in a while

[abicalho]

Radiosity is computed once, rendered from any view. Lighttracer is computed at render time and gets exponentially slower when there are more than 1 light bounces.

 

Pick your choice knowing the limitations of each one and how much time you have available to render.

[Christopher Nichols]

Alex... Can't you do texture baking of a lighttracer solution? Would that not allow one to basically only compute it once as well? I actually have not tried it, since I only use Vray for my GI.

[abicalho]

You can texture bake Light Tracer, but the process would be so complex that I don't know if it's worth it.

 

It takes a while to unwrap and process everything. Then you have to make sure each texture is in a good enough size. Also I am not sure the secondary bounces would work correctly and I'm not even sure I tested for that.

[Tim Fairbanks]

IMO - Light Tracer rules for exteriors, if you can balance the rendering times with your workflow/time constraints. My colleague and I agree that it's been one of the most useful feature upgrades to 3ds max in quite a few years, at least for doing architectural visualization

 

Much easier to setup, no radiostiy anomalies like light-leaks, invalidated radiosity solutions, etc. Light tracer is also much more compatible with projects that require constant design revisions (especially if you're talking about doing a 100 houses). With radiostiy, you have to run the solution before you can render, and if anything changes in your scene, you have to throw the rad solution away and generate a new one.

 

Our office makes a lot of design changes, and Radiosity has failed to be useful in this context.

 

For interiors though, Light Tracer will not work very well.

[Jason Matthews]

If still offered for download, I would look at Vray free. It is pretty quick, provided that you set it right. Also, are these going to be close ups of individual houses or at a distance of several houses per render. What size are you planning to render these at? This might have an effect on which method you choose.

 

Alex has a good point. Once you compute the solution once, you are good to go. So that might interest you as well.

 

Good luck.

[coastalhomedesigns]

I would like to thank everyone for there advice. I belive we will do it in LT for now.

 

But will the free vray be of any use since it is limited?

 

[Jason Matthews]

I have gotten some decent results using it. It is very straight forward but like Alex mentioned, it might be better to use radiosity if all of your scene is the same. Then you render each house seperately. The down side is that if the scene is huge, it would take forever to run the rad. calcs.

[VTWales33]

The Chaos group website seems to be down, does anyone know somewhere else I could download VRay Free. Thanks.

[vishesh_12]

Alex... Can't you do texture baking of a lighttracer solution? Would that not allow one to basically only compute it once as well? I actually have not tried it, since I only use Vray for my GI.

 

I have used Texture baking in 2 Architectural projects [ Exterior ]. Results were quite good actually. It works well

 

But the time it took me to bake all the textures was enormous. imagine a cone like building with so many details and u have to do the texture baking. for small details, i just used the normal lighting but still it tooks me alot of time.

 

Nowadays i don't use Texture baking technique mainly bcoz of Time constraints.

Cheers !!!

[plastic]

chaos website works again.

vray free is MUCH better than light tracer.

but so is mental ray.

the best thing woul be vray advanced, of course.

if you are planning 100 jobs, it should fit the budget.

you may get about the same quality with vray free or mental ray, but it will take much longer, since the advanced GI engines are missing and other stuff that rocks.