STRAT, radiosity

[sdds]

Hey STRAT, doing som radiosity/gi in c4d like you suggested. I would like to explore the possibility of using this for animation. It would be great if you could give me a few tips. I have read your other post about using tags & materials to control effects, I was thinking of using negative lights to fake shadows & only lights for radiosity no sky object.

[STRAT]

i'd only suggest proper gi for animations or flybys if you have a wonderfully powerfull render facility or your model is pretty small. cinema has a know bug in sample accumulation where gi frame rendering for animation is concerned.

 

my main tips - for gi animation, if you have to, try to eliminate all phong tags. suprizingly this makes a massive render speed difference frame to frame.

other than that i tend to make use of localised AO and fake gi lighting via ambient omni lights. but there's a whole art/skill. involved in doing this effectivly. Baking is another option that Ernest favours, but i dont use this as i find it too faffing about and restrictive. horses for corses.

 

you might want to invest in Final Render that do proper gi rendering for Cinema no problems, or wait until the Vray bridge for cinema is imminently released. the AR3 (if/when it ever appears) might also solve these problems.

[sdds]

Like my images here, they are done with AO and ambient omni lights, maybe stick with this then. I fine exteriors work better with this though.

 

Baking is a pain for walks through's.

[STRAT]

that image is nice, but the AO is a touch over the top imo.

 

yup, your ao/fake gi methods obviously work nice, and i'd use this method for animations definately. but for stills? i'd use real gi if i were you. it's always more realistic than faking it. you can always add an AO shadow pass to enhance things. i do the real gi / AO pass combination with every still i do.

[sdds]

Thanks m8, thats a great help. All I need to do is practice speeding up my gi renders then I will be well away, at the mo they are slow, running a power mac g4 & g4 powerbook.

[STRAT]

speeding up gi renders is just a case of optomisation. Internals can be slow whatever, but externals, when optomised correctly, can wizz through the render process.

 

why not, when ur ready, post up a typical external view you've rendered with real gi, with your settings used, and see if we cant maybe half the render times?

[sdds]

thanks m8, will do.