Solution for simulating 80 lights in a scene.

[kag245]

I'm working on this project and I am having a problem: there are too many lights in this scene. The reference photos I am going off of show that there really are about 80 lights in this store. So my question is what is a good way to fake this? I can't realistically put 80 lights in my scene, my computer can't handle that (and my computer is halfway decent). Here is a render showing the ceiling a little bit and how many can lights are actually supposed to be in the scene. Any ideas?[ATTACH=CONFIG]39623[/ATTACH]

[abmitalia]

Depend what you define a halfway decent computer so. I'm working on a complex villa scene with candelers, spotlights etc with over 180 vray lights uptil now and compared to the type of computers most forum cgarchitect here are working with I would define my computer nothing special.

 

To the scene: The interior architect of this room must have had some infancy trauma of darkness cauz this ceiling lights are exaggerated. But like the effect of those lights will be quite uniform in the space I would place a large vray plane light excluding the reflection and or specular effectof it in the role out - to make every spot reflection visible on the floor and furniture I would place 80 objects with Vray light mtl in the place where the spotlights are supposed to be ore if you model out the lamps place the Vray light mtl material where the bulb is supposed to be. AH forgot place the vray lights which are close to the walls to make see the effect. Have fun. RK

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Agree on the previous comment. 80 lights is heavy, but not to much for a render these days. If your machine is not 64bit with 64bit max and a min of 6gb of ram, then it is time to upgrade.

 

Now, ...if you are up to min snuff, there are ways to make lights more efficient. Lower subdivisions, only close lights are area lights, limit fall off range, don't effect specular, etc...

 

Now, ...all that said, are you sure you need 80 lights to communicate the scene? Are you sure you can't do it in fewer with less pain, and potentiallyh more success because of the simplification?

[Dave Buckley]

ok so break your lights off into groups of say 10 and have 1 rectangualr photometric light representing those lights?

 

then just place self illuminated objects into the downlight fixtures to represent the bulbs.

 

or as in my attached images I have just 1 light.

 

the room is goign to be pretty evenly lit with that may lights.

 

if for example, i wanted to see the lights falloff on the walls, then I may put singular photometric lights representing those lights nearer the walls, it still saves having to place all of them

[Dave Buckley]

and if you're worried about reflections, just make sure the self iluminated materil is visible in reflections

[Dave Buckley]

added a few objects in so you can see reflections interacting

 

if you want the max file I can give it you so you can see the light/material arrangment

[Dave Buckley]

apologies, I only read the first post, didn't see you have alread had the same answer from ralf :$

[abmitalia]

apologies, I only read the first post, didn't see you have alread had the same answer from ralf :$

 

May be, but your's was a great demostration, well done. RK

[kag245]

Thank you all for all the feedback, it was helpful. I used rectangular photometerics for the center and singular ones for the places on the walls that I thought needed the falloff on the wall shown. Again thank you!