[Radiance-general] Plants, Landscaping, Entourage, and Radiance...

[Jeffrey McGrew]

Hello all,

I'm still a Radiance noob, and am just
getting my feet under me in using it, and
I understand on a base level the advantages
and abilities of it.

What I'm wondering is how to deal with
things such as landscaping, people, cars,
and other such 'Entourage' items when
producing design visualization renderings
for projects.

I'm concerned that modeling these items
whole, and including them within the
scene, will add too much complexity to
the project and greatly increase
rendering times on large exterior views.

Many 3D programs allow for 'lightweight'
objects to solve this problem. Accurender
auto-generates trees & plants on the fly
fractally, and Max/Viz allows for 'RPC
Content'. However (and please correct
me if I'm wrong) there aren't any
Radiance add-ons to auto-generate
plants and/or allow for RPC content.

Does everyone typically have these
items as whole Radiance models, instanced
into the 'scene'? Is this not a problem
due to Radiance's render engine's differences
from other 3D packages? What about the
repetitiveness apparent in an image when
the same tree/bush/person/car is used
over and over and over again? I see
some exterior renderings on Visarc's
website that have wonderful looking
trees, does anyone know how those
were done?

Thanks,

Jeffrey