FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
Rainbow Room
This is inspired by David's render submissions of today. I suggested that spotlights might do a better job than and hdri but in truth neither approach is better. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. In this case I have used just one direct lightsource and six flattened spotlights each set by the color of a wall. The mirror ball is posed to expose the hidden areas of the room for the color transfer effect. The scene is rendered premium AA 64 rays per pixel with soft shadows engaged. Total render was only 20 minutes at this resolution. It would have taken about 200 minutes on my single core celeron system, still not too bad for indirect light simulation at this resolution. The source file is only around 2 mb so I e-mailed it to those of us involved in the indirect light discussion. Anyone else who would like the source file to see an example of the bouncing light idea just e-mail me and I will send it to you. Feedback is appreciated.
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Seems we have very similar feelings about Carrara!
My system runs 20 ghz, 8 cores each at 2.5ghz. I am surely spoiled by the specs of my machine which is why I try to give single core estimates in the descriptions. I also chose to render this example at a high resolution. Lowering the size by half will lower the render time by at least 75%, making this a 20 minute render for you too likely, but I cannot be sure. Again peeks Carrara into my head and the fact that it handles all of this stuff in a much more straightforward manner and in much less time. If only the overall interface didn't make me hate using it.
Goodness! You must have got a seriously fast machine to render this in 20 minutes. I just tried on mine and it was thinking about 2 hours which will be closer to 4 by the time it is done if I know anything... So my main objection then is, essentially, speed.
I have another version rendering now that uses five lights per wall instead of just one. It makes much smoother light. We shall discuss.
Feedback is comming later. I'm currently busy rendering a scene where I experimented with your haze setting you've discussed in the DAZ forum. Thanks for sending me the source, I'll go over it for sure.
I suspect you will anticipate my criticisms. The caustics, while interesting, I do not think would be that visible in a shadow region lit exclusively by light scattered from the environment. And even using soft shadows the spots still clearly act as a single light source when it is supposed to be the entire wall area that is reflecting this light. You know this though and I have to say the effect is very pleasing.
I forgot to mention 3 other lights that are on top of the rectangle to bounce light up onto the sphere. Also I added the glass sphere to example the caustic "shadow" cast on the sphere by the lights along the walls.