Irradiance mapping with a texture overide

[off the cuffe]

I Guys,Galls,

Just doing some testing on a rather large scene, and I thought I would try to calculate my Irr Maps using a global override texture ( grey/white Vray material) for all objects, excluding glass and anything that is transparent.This renders quite quick with Hi settings, but come final render time, each frame takes longer than expected.

Regards of Render settings, would you think this method would be an issue as I would think that any direct lighting onto objects usually gets stored into the Irr Map, but it would need to be calculated again for each frame as the Irr maps used the white only texture.

Has anyone try this method before and had success?

Look forward too hearing some comments.....

[Nic H]

with computers being as fast as they are these days GI - even at very high settings - doesnt take long to calculate at all

I dont really see the benefit of doing this and it may look werid if everything has the same colour when calculating the GI?

[off the cuffe]

Hi Nicnic,

thanks for your reply and opinion.The GI calculated in the image attached has been produced using the override material method.each frame to calculate the GI this way takes about 3min compared to about 12min ( the standard way) when you have a 2000 frame animation, this can save a lot of time.But do you think that this would method would effect the final output image.( re: calculating reflections/refractions etc )At the moment their rendering each frame at about 40min.Wanted to see if anyone has done this before with good results, or am i wasting my time.

[Scott Schroeder]

Why even calculate GI at all then with your method? You are essentially using an AO map to control your GI. So just render to texture out AO maps per object and set up materials with the AO applied to the self illumination slot. Then render in Scanline.

 

Your shot looks so-so, but it's too clean and off looking due to such an even GI cast. The whole point is that each material doesn't throw GI as equally as you have it showing.

 

Rather than try to use an obscure method, take a look at your Vray settings. I'm willing to bet you have too high of settings and that's causing your longer render times, or your computer is too slow. Or both.