Large Marina Scene setup/Usefull tips?

[mhinks]

Hi all

 

I've just been given the task of constructing a large scene for a Marina animation to get planning permission.

 

I have been given a mesh made from land survey data. Its messy but has a lot of detail to it. I need to keep the scene as accurate as poss so the developers can use it to modify if views are obscured, etc. I have used metres as the units. I am now wondering what the best method will be to light the scene? And what type of shadows to use, for quality over speed.

 

Has anyone done a large scene and found some good methods of lighting, and any other tips you might have. There will be some small details on the buildings that will need to light/shadow correctly. I dont want to end up with a map resolution too high!

 

I am planning on getting a couple of RPC librarys, parking lot cars, and trees/bushes, to fill the scene.

 

I have the use of brazil, but not sure wheather to use it or light tracer, or standard lights?

 

Thanks inadvance.

[Noise]

Have you checked out this thread?

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=5762

 

N

[mbr]

I can tell you you won't want to use light tracer, unless you have a large render farm!

 

Use Brazil, if you have the computers to run it. GI, even with a great program, will take a loooong time to render and animation. I'd start looking around their forum for specific answers. With a lot of water, it's going to take a loooong time to render, regardless, so I'd make sure you've got a bunch of computers set up.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[mhinks]

Thanks mbr

 

I was thinking light tracer would be to costly for render time, early tests have shown brazil around 3 times quicker, but I've not filled the scene up completely yet, or mats.

 

I was thinking just using GI direct skylight, with a direct spot for the sun! Not bothering with indirect skylight.

[Scott Schroeder]

If you want to ultra streamline the render dipose of any ideas using GI, it simply takes too long. Use a lightdome using standard max lights as a fake to GI and use a direct light as your sunlight. The settings on your domelights should be a blueish color, with about .08 intensity and have cast shadows on. For your sunlight a value of 1.2 is pretty good and have cast shadows on. This is a very basic, decent looking, and very fast rendering setup.

[mhinks]

Hi Velvet

 

Im trying out your lightdome option to light my scene. I have 17 spots at 0.08, with shadow map at 0.01 bias, 1024 size, sample 6. The shadows arnt great, so upping the size some more. could you surgest some settings that you have used? The sun light will prob have the same settings but 1.2 multi.

[Ernest Burden III]

My tip, from having done a scene like this years ago, is to model the bottom of the body of water. That way, the boats and piers, etc, will cast shadows, and when seen from a high angle it will look fantastic. The bump on the water will make it look just right when raytraced.

 

I don't know where I would have some samples I did, but if you are interested I can look in some archived stuff.