OTOY Forums

I was wanting to model a hallway with no windows. The only light would be from ceiling fixtures. Since light from meshes isn't supported yet, I was going to try placing square holes in the ceiling, covered by a material that is almost completely transparent. The material would be like a softbox diffuser on a light fixture, to hide the fact that it is just holes where the lights would be. This would allow the outer environment light in, faking light fixtures.

I did a very quick test of creating a hallway and rendering with pathtracing. One thing I noticed is the rendering took a while to reduce noise, even with less than 1000 triangles in the scene. I'm attaching a picture for reference. It was rendered in 17 minutes and still has some noise.

I was hoping some of the experts on this site could give me some advice on the best way to fake this type of lighting. Also, what could I do to help the rendering times for doing something like this?

17 minutes is not that bad for the output you got... is this beta 1.21?

I was able to cut in half the render time in an interior by adjusting the max bounces to a minimum where you don't see black reflections etc... try it!

These kinds of scenes really need area lights/mesh emitters to render efficiently...
Still 17 minutes is not bad at all.

Radiance

OK, it's good to know the render time isn't too unusual. I figure keeping all the materials on the default glossy is probably effecting render times.

I was planning on doing a project like this with no windows, so I was curious if I could fake the ceiling lights to get photorealistic renders more quickly in Octane or if I would have to use a slower renderer that supported area lights. I think I will do a few more simple experiments to see what I come up with before deciding.

Proupin wrote:17 minutes is not that bad for the output you got... is this beta 1.21?

Yes, it was with the new 1.21 beta. Thanks for the advice on bounces. I will try experimenting.