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60,000 Lights
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
60,000 Lights // Archive: Tech Forum
Post by bill // May 28, 2006, 2:36pm
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bill
Total Posts: 114
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I need to create a rendering of an ice rink. Above the rink will be a canopy suspended by cables. Interlaced within this canopy will be about 60,000 little white lights. How would I go about creating such a project with so many lights without all the lights washing out the scene and without the scene taking 3 years to render? |
Post by daybe // May 28, 2006, 3:31pm
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daybe
Total Posts: 562
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I have a feeling with that many lights your system wouldn't handle it very well, too many calculations I would think and would probably not render. You may have to come up with a alternative solution like creating simulated lights by painting objects white with a high luminace to simulate a light. As I did here http://forums1.caligari.com/trueSpace/showthread.php?t=738
HTH |
Post by TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb // May 28, 2006, 5:08pm
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TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb
Total Posts: 858
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Don't know the set up or view point of the scene so this may not work but could you make holes in the canopy to represent the lights and have one or two light sources in/above the canopy to shine through the holes to represent the lights? Only other thing I can think of is texture/transparency maps with the constant (or similar) shader representing the lights shining through the holes created by the maps.
Any help? |
Post by spacekdet // May 28, 2006, 5:38pm
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spacekdet
Total Posts: 1360
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59,999 lightbulb shaped objects with elevated luminance values and 1 big ass area light. |
Post by Tiles // May 28, 2006, 9:28pm
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Tiles
Total Posts: 1037
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What about post processing? Wasn´t there an plugin around called Megaglow? Maybe even doing the post processing in Photoshop? |
Post by Shike // May 29, 2006, 2:25am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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Sorta depends on how close to the rig the camera will be. I'm assuming from the ice or one of the seats.:confused:
One big white (max luminosity) onesided planar face ( that doesn't cast or recieve shadows)
Then using an Alpha-map to mask out the 60000 lights.
And, as previously stated, a big arealight for the actual lighting.:rolleyes:
( using 60000objects might put to much load on the render, even simple cubes would add 360k faces) |
Post by GraySho // May 29, 2006, 1:26pm
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GraySho
Total Posts: 695
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60k cubes take much much more time to load than one object with 1 million faces. I don't think it makes any sense to put 60k lights, that would be overkill in any way (imagine to place that many lights). First, you can't adjust the luminosity of each light that low (I guess), second it will take too much time to render, third you will see no difference between that actual light setup, or a fake light setup. The idea with a mask and the constand shader (with a fake light setup) sounds like a good one. |
Post by noko // Jun 6, 2006, 7:07pm
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noko
Total Posts: 684
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Are the lights already in place? Or is this an improvement being looked into? Is this to simulate what lighting conditions will be like with new lights or just to show how they will look (that is if they are not already there)?
The easiest and fastest way to simulate the lighting condition is to capture the environment or similar environment making a High Dynamic Range Image. The environmental HDRI then can be used to simulate the captured lighting condition from within Truespace without having to have 60000 objects or lights. Render times could be in the minutes with this. The HDRI can also be used as a background to show the lights casting the light in the HDRI scene. |
Post by bill // Jun 6, 2006, 9:47pm
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bill
Total Posts: 114
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Thanks for all the replies and ideas. I haven't checked back here in about a week so I hadn't read the responses until now.
The lights are not in place. In fact I have not even started the project. I was just looking for ideas about how to do the lights before I even started. The main goal is to see how the lights would look in the scene, not necessarily to use them as actual lighting for the scene. An area light or some such should work for the actual lighting of the scene. I just need to show all the little points of light to illustrate what this would look light if it were to be built in real life. At this point the ice rink does not exist. It would be a bonus if I could show the scene in an animation or in trueplay with all the lights, but that might be asking a bit much.
From what I gather here I'm better off just rendering the scene with just one area light and then putting all the little lights in during post-process. That appears to be the easiest way to go. |
Post by GraySho // Jun 7, 2006, 7:44am
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GraySho
Total Posts: 695
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I suggest you use an image mask. Make a black image with some white dots and copy that to the alpha channel. In trueSpace, use it as texture map (with u/v repeat to your liking) and the constand shader in the reflectance channel. Should look like many little lightbulbs/LED's. Animation wouldn't be any problem. |
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