[Radiance-general] ambient setting for very large scenes

[Rob Guglielmetti]

Jelle Feringa / EZCT Architecture & Design Research wrote:
>
> I’m struggling a little with setting my ambient parameters.
>

Join the club! =8-)

> Which in my scene would lead to a –ar setting of ~5000. Which seems 
> absurd to me.
>
> So what would be the appropriate thing to do here?
>

Absurd it is. This is a problem when you have a scene like yours. You 
want some distant object or scenery to be visible out the window, for 
example, so you put it in your model and then the images seem really 
flat or have light leaks because the -ar isn't high enough. One thing 
you could do is cheat, and place the objects closer to your area of 
interest than they really are, scaling them up a bit. This works for 
treelines and things like that, anyway. Another would be to exclude the 
distant objects from the ambient calculation with the -ae option, the 
problem there (and maybe some folks here have input on this) is that 
your objects are outside, your area of interest is inside, so your -av 
is likely to be too low for the exterior objects (which is how all the 
indirectly lit surfaces derive their radiance information when their 
materials are on the -ae list).

-ar 5000 would take forever to render!

Good luck, Jelle.

- Rob