> > Sorry, could you explain this a bit more? I want to use rad in an
> > animation - are you saying that your method accelerated the render and
> > improved the quality? If so, could you run this past me step by step?
>
> I believe the method he used was:
>
> 1. render a still image of the scene with radiosity, saving the radiosity.
> Make sure you can see as much of the surface area of objects as possible.
>

Yes, this is what I did as suggested in some previous posts.  I placed a
camera between the four balls looking straight down using the fisheye camera
type in order to see as much as possible.  (As suggested by Slime, I
should've added some no shadow mirrors behind the balls to see more surface)
The idea here is to be able to see as much of the scene as possible from one
camera view so that radiosity data is calculated for as much of the scene as
possible (rad data is only calculated for what can be seen).
Also render with as high quality settings as you can at a larger resolution
to get the best, smoothest results
(the original render was 500x500, the scenes rendered for animation were
160x120).
The original render used to save the settings took ~1h (I can't remeber the
actual time).
Rendering the anim scenes with loaded data took about 50s each for 72 frames
about 1h total
For comparison, calculating the rad for each scene at 160x120 rather than
loading the rad data would've taken about 13m 35s each for a whopping 16h
18m total for 72 frames, plus , because the rad was calculated for each
frame the results wouldn't have blended smoothly from frame to frame and you
would see some flickering in the animation.



> 2. Render the animation, loading the saved radiosity data for each frame,
> with always_sample off. Don't change the radiosity file at all while
> rendering the animation.
>
> This method, I assume, only works for scenes where the camera is moving,
but
> not if the objects are moving.

Yes, this method only works with stationary objects and a moving camera.

-tgq

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