I have a scene I have been working on and there are a large number of light 
sources in it, This appears to be a real problem.  Is there a way to 
'eliminate' extra sources that won't be visiable using the fade_distance 
and fade_power from the light source? (sort of like fog only for  light 
source 'consideration')

I just don't want to wait 4 hours for a 320x240 test shot on a 2.2Ghz 
machine. Upgrading is obviously a silly solution because all things 
considered it won't do anything useful (such as dramatically reduce 
rendering times).

Should I make a 'IF' statement for creating the light sources based on the 
camera location? (they have a quick fall off so they look real.) 

Another question is, this scene is ment to be in a dark place with lots of 
'torches' 'braziers' giving illumination throughout the scene.  Is it 
possible to use 'black' fog to fade parts of the scene 'unseen' etc?

The scene is basically a large flat plaza with many columns the columns 
have light sources about there bases.

Suggestions?
Commentaries?
Questions regarding how it's coded?

I automatically generate the light sources with the columns. The braziers 
are seperate objects from the light sources. For objects greater than a 
certain distance I assume these details are not visable including the light 
source (see fade settings above). So is this the right way to handle this? 
Do a 'distance' calculation, from the camera to the light source/object. If 
it's greater than XXX don't create them. I'm thinking of doing the same 
with the columns (I have 15000 of those in the scene I'm still tweaking 
that to be honest.) Only with the columns I plan on switching to a cylinder 
or a prism to simplify the look. Columns are made up of 10 sections that 
are CSG made. Thus they are quite complex and the result object IMHO is a 
waste of data space and likely tracing time.

My problem at the moment is I have some 'glowing' crystals of which there 
are 40 some, no light sources on the columns and a parallel area light. It 
seems that puting the light sources in the crystals slows things down 
immensly. Thoughts?

Stephen

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