irradiance map saving...

[Mr Max]

Hi every one,

I ran into this interesting tutorial about saving irradiance map and reusing it again to save render times! this is what basically came in the tutorial:

 

 

"

• First prepare the scene (geometry, materials, lighting etc)
  
• Adjust the irradiance map settings for the required level of detail (e.g. chose a suitable preset) and tune the other render parameters.
  
• Clear any previous irradiance map from memory in order to avoid weird results
  
• Set the irradiance map mode to Incremental add to current map
  
• Render as many views as you need. The first one will be slow, since a full irradiance map will be computed. Each of the next views will be faster depending on how relevant the memory irradiance map is to that view.
  

You can save the accumulated irradiance map to a file. That map can be used to render quickly other views of the scene, if required later on. To load the saved map, you need to set the mode to From file enter the correct file name and render any image. You can then set the mode back to Incremental add to current map and continue rendering other views. If you are sure the map already contains enough information, you can simply leave the mode to From file

I did all those steps but when I switched to "from file" mode in the end, it gave me a very quik render but it was dark!!! there is something missing I need to do so that the incremental modes are all saved correctly and then used correctly

the "from file mode" takes half the time to render in the end compared to "incremental add to current map" but looks with no lights!

any clues why this happened?

 

I was also wondering if I could save incremental maps from a test render and use them on a final render but not sure if that would work and not affect my scene!?

Sorry if i'm bugging you with my questions

Edited April 8, 2009 by Mr Max