News Stand Update.
Added magazines to all the racks. Atleast with a bunch of geometry for the time being. I am thinking about just texturing it to look like piles in the end but we'll see how that goes in a couple weeks I guess.

a wire of the entrance to the station.

a quick occlusion render sans roof.
A lot of the structure is glass to let in natural light. So much more to come!

quick render default physical sun/sky to see how things are going to shape up eventually.

keep up the good work... the level of detail in the newsstand is pretty intense. me likey.

the first real render.
After getting 90% of my lighting set up for the scene this render hogged my system resources for almost 4 hours.
I know it doesn't look like it should have but then again there is a lot not seen in the shot and I was trying to find out what my upper limit is going to be when it comes to rendering out this bad-boy textures n all.
Anyways, I'm happy with how it looks and the fluorescents are looking pretty good I think.
Mental Ray Area lights - cylinders, with global illumination and anti-aliasing (the time consumer) to get out the noise.
If anyone knows how to optomize my lighting setup a bit that would be much appreciated! So here is the info.

GI only by the way.
Each light fixture has two bulbs and thus two MR_area lights. Each light emits 500 photons and has a very low intensity.
There are two rows of fixtures, each row containing 15 fixtures.
So there are 60 bulbs and 60 photon emitters.
So 30,000 photons in the scene (60 * 500)
Mental Ray settings at Production with AA contrast upped to .01 .01 .01
GI is default except for Max Photon Depth which is 10.

Anyone have any ideas as to reduce my render times or optimize the lighting setup/rendering setup at all?

Thanks kindly!
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/tracklevel%20lights.png

even though you want the light fixtures to mimic the fluorescent bulbs, you don't have to make them LIKE the bulbs. you can just make one area light for each light fixture, and create two cylinders with self-illumination and glow to LOOK like the bulbs.

are mental ray area lights visible in renders? if so, make them hidden! they should still emit light and such...

that should save you half the lights. if you don't get the same effect, just up the intensity.

Thanks for the tips neostrider.
That brought my render time down to 2 hours and 7 minutes.
That's pretty good I must say. Though there is a little bit of different it sure seems to be worth the extra hour and 40 minutes.
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/trac...%20lights2.png

yea just keep on cranking them up in intensity til you get the look you want. glad to help with the render times :)

thanks NeoStrider. I thought I'd update on the progress of this section.
The whole subway set is on halt until further progress. I started to texture, and am having some serious issues with my glass that should be reflecting the geometry around it instead the glass is reflecting the outer environment. Beyond that is the fact that it will take me almost a month to render 10 seconds of it. Considering the demo has to be done in just over 7 weeks, that's not really an option for me as I need more on my demo than just a ten second clip of the subway section.

So, I have decided to take on some smaller ideas, shine em up and make em look good before going back to the subway. I would like to eventually get the subway done and looking better than it currently does so in time I'm sure it will pop up again.

In the meantime I will soon be adding the new work to this thread.

So I've been hard at work trying to figure out what to replace my subway station with.
So I started by building a condo unit. Almost done with all the modeling, just need to get the bathrooms done and a few accessories. Started to set up my lighting rig for daylight.
I'm happy with it so far and it takes no time at all to render, thats a good thing:P.

So lots of progress shots to come, as I hope to start texturing in the next couple of days and hopefully animating the cameras and rendering by the end of the week.

Comments and crits appreciated as always!
-Cheers
Alexander

Onto the images:
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting01.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting02.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting03.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting04.png

you making a lighting / texturing reel?

Trying to do an arch viz reel, so yeah essentially. Still tweaking up the lighting system. Getting blotchy light with GI/FG still so trying to figure that out and then I have to change the Sky colour. Just doing some testing with the HSV values.

If you've any suggestions please help me out:)

Edit:
Also if it's like the last indoor project I did I'm going to have to add some area lights at the windows to get more precise and accurate lighting in the rooms. But if you have a better suggestion for that please do let me know:)

Done some more lighting work, things are starting to look a lot better. Added in my area light to cast photons directly into the first room. I will get to the other rooms soon.
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting05.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting06.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting07.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting08.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting09.png
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting10.png

The last image is the most current and what I think looks the best. The sky color has been fixed as you can tell and the lighting is starting to look much more realistic in my oppinion.

And better still. I'm getting much happier with the results.
http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting11.png

http://ahosking.com/3DAnimation/condo/Lighting12.png

I purchased some Digital tutors DVDs and am waiting for them, got the mental ray tips and tricks dvd the other day though and it is so very very helpful! I'd recommend the purchase of it to anyone interested in rendering and compositing:)

Ok so these Digital Tutors things are a massive help. Not only have I reduced my render times on the scene by about 80% but they still look the same. This is going a long way to getting things back on track for the subway part of my demo:)
Either way this scene is starting to shape up itself. Will start texturing and posting some of those pictures in the next few hours/days.