Natural Lighting Help

[Okalix]

Hey guys,

I have a question about lighting. Sorry if this has been asked before, I searched but couldn't find anything specific.

I want to use natural sunlight for my day-time scenes but of course light passing through the windows is a huge time-sink when it comes to rendering the scene with iray. Can anyone suggest the best course of action here?

I'm using a large house as the scene and don't want to have to go through every window or wall/window-parent/child and take out the glass (unless there's a quick way to do that on mass?).

Or maybe there's a way I can just tell daz not to calculate the light as light-through-glass and just treat it as if the window wasn't even there?

Sorry if this is a big noob question btw... but that's exactly what I am

 

[mickydoo]

You only need to take out the glass in the viewport, the quickest way is to click on the window in question and use the geometry tool to hide and/or delete the glass. I do it all the time, not for the speed of rendering but to stop indoor lights reflecting off them.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Also note that when using a large house but rendering, for example only one room, DAZ has to calculate how light interacts throughout the house as well, which will make your renders take longer to make. Maybe it's better to divide that house into the parts you need and use only those parts in each case.
You can have a file with the whole house and then several files only with the parts (the different bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, etc ...).
To do this, it will depend on how the house is made, in some you will only have to go selecting the parts and delete them or make it not be seen (if you delete them the loading time of the file will be reduced, if you only hide them not). If it's not divided into parts, for example, the whole exterior wall is only one part, you will have to use geometry tool and delete it manually... it can take a little work but once done it will help you a lot to be able to make much faster renders.

As for the light, it's a bit the same... sometimes you have to use some tricks to get the desired but optimized result. It's normal to think about using a general light (like the sunlight) to illuminate the whole house, but that will lengthen the render times a lot. Instead, you can use an image so that it is seen outside the window as if it were illuminated during the day, and use only a focus (or more than one) for the interior light of the room; and in the window you can set the reflectivity of the glasses to zero so that it doesn't reflect the light (from the tab surfaces) (reflections lengthen the rendering times a lot, and better to use them only when they are essential, as in a mirror for example).

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I want to use natural sunlight for my day-time scenes but of course light passing through the windows is a huge time-sink when it comes to rendering the scene with iray. Can anyone suggest the best course of action here?

One lazy way to do it is to use an

You must be registered to see the links

Simple and effective.

I've always avoided rendering interiors because it takes super long and you can't use hdri's without removing all the walls so I build a solution for those problems: an Iray interior camera.

the Iray interior camera is a camera I made myself for rendering interiors in DAZ3D to make rendering super fast.
It contains iray section planes on the back and on the camera that are matched with the standard view of a normal camera. The section planes will cut trough everything in iray mode that is not in view of the camera which means it will take less time and let outside light in.
It makes rendering interiors render in at least 1/2 the time it usually does and lets light from HDRIs in, you may still have to remove the ceiling though.

 

[Okalix]

You only need to take out the glass in the viewport, the quickest way is to click on the window in question and use the geometry tool to hide and/or delete the glass. I do it all the time, not for the speed of rendering but to stop indoor lights reflecting off them.

Also note that when using a large house but rendering, for example only one room, DAZ has to calculate how light interacts throughout the house as well, which will make your renders take longer to make. Maybe it's better to divide that house into the parts you need and use only those parts in each case.
You can have a file with the whole house and then several files only with the parts (the different bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, etc ...).
To do this, it will depend on how the house is made, in some you will only have to go selecting the parts and delete them or make it not be seen (if you delete them the loading time of the file will be reduced, if you only hide them not). If it's not divided into parts, for example, the whole exterior wall is only one part, you will have to use geometry tool and delete it manually... it can take a little work but once done it will help you a lot to be able to make much faster renders.

As for the light, it's a bit the same... sometimes you have to use some tricks to get the desired but optimized result. It's normal to think about using a general light (like the sunlight) to illuminate the whole house, but that will lengthen the render times a lot. Instead, you can use an image so that it is seen outside the window as if it were illuminated during the day, and use only a focus (or more than one) for the interior light of the room; and in the window you can set the reflectivity of the glasses to zero so that it doesn't reflect the light (from the tab surfaces) (reflections lengthen the rendering times a lot, and better to use them only when they are essential, as in a mirror for example).

One lazy way to do it is to use an

You must be registered to see the links

Simple and effective.

Thanks for all these tips guys. I'll try them out and hopefully can get it optimized.