I've been watching the very cool indoor results and I decided to try an architectural rendering of a half completed model I had lying around. Yves mentioned in his Cornel box tut that the outdoor setup was considerably different but I couldn't find any mention of how to do it.
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Some questions for the photon gods:
What's the maximum number of photons?
Can the photon map be cached to render items where the lighting does not change (like walk/flythroughs)? Is it possible to bake radiousity lighting onto an object/choreography? Will either of these approaches produce reasonable (for animation) render times?
How do you light an outdoor scene? In this scene I've got one kleig light acting as a sun and positionsed above the camera and another kleig pointing at the skydome. I didn't make the skydome ambient (which was probably a mistake), and the sun kleig only casts one ray( which was definitely a mistake). The sun light had to be dialled up to an intensity of 400 to light the scene.
Also the image layers I used for trees have caused line artifacts at their bases where they intersect with the ground plane.
Any advice and/or pointers would be appreciated.

1,000,000

that... i'm not sure of. But it probably would take the same amount of time to render. The actual calculation for radiosity is extreamly small compared to render times. Yves is gunna have to answer this question.

You should use at least 10 lights to light an outdoor scene, 8 sky lights for all 45 degree angles in a circular path around and slightly above the subject, one sky light directly above the object, and the sun light. Remember, all photons are divided among the number of lights... so i think if you add to many sky lights you will not have enough photons for the sun light. Use kleigs for all your lights, and make sure that the beam is only wide enough to cover all that you need, or else rays will disappear into space and they will be wasted... unless of course you have an enclosed environment dome.

I hope i was able to help out a little with your problem

by the way... your roof seems very transparent... almost none existant... i wouldnt want to meet the office workers who had to work on the top floor on a rainy day. lol

Good start.

Do you want to use radiosity for this.... or just light it?

If you want to just light it...... a 25 light global illumination setup(yves skylights) at 2 percent intensity for the lights with a light blue color (sky blue) inside of a bright blue skydome (cast no shadows). Then a sun type light at about 80 percent with a slight orange yellow tint shining down(100% darkness for shadows).

For radiosity....... Its harder.

-Skydome, 50 percent transparency, with a white dome around it, yellow kleigh light, aimed at ground, but the falloff just barely touches, with 0 width softness. The falloff however will make 3/4 brighter, so make sure u cant see the darker part (good camera).


Then just adjust. Try these out and see if they work for u.


Hope i helped!

For lighting without radiosity, i have a good scene i could post.... if u want it.


Ben

I also suggest for radiostiy using the calc surface plugin.

there's a pluggin that will tell you what the surface area of your model is!?!?! TELL ME PLEASE!!

I dont recomend ever using 0% shadows... it can make for a very unrealistic render... and 100% darkness shadows are a must for radiosity... i believe there is no question on that one.

No. Although this should not be a too difficult feature to do in theory but not in the high priority list.


No. It is not possible to do that. This is another feature that would be doable but would require considerable work.


That would be the right way to do that. Make sure your skydome pointing light is a Klieg, 180° angle and 0% softness and is positionned lw enough to light most of the skydome surface.


From the point of view of illumination and photon mapping, this is not a mistake. What is much more important than ambiance is the radiance which should be set to 100%. Ambiance is actually a problem with radiosity. So better restrict its use in a radiosity scene. At least don't use it on the skydome.


Yes.


That is normal.

Also, with such a huge skylight, you will need a very large photon sampling area.

This should be an interesting scene to setup.