Using photons indoors... but viewed from outside

[jonboris]

Hi all,

I have a question about using mental ray with global illumination and photons.

I'm rendering a shop front viewed from the outside. It's a night-time scene, with light spilling from the shop. I'm emitting a few photons from a point light inside the shop, which is working ok for me. My big worry is that the scene is becoming really inefficient, with photons spilling out into the world outside... Ultimately I want to have several shop fronts on the street so the problem may only compound itself.

I guess I'm just looking for some advice on how to manage my photons - is there a way to restrict them to the inside of the shop but allow the direct light from the point light to continue casting out onto the street?

ps. It's fine if you just point me to a relevant tutorial

[dan]

Hello jonboris! Here's one really simple way to catch any extraneous photons you may not want that are floating off into infinity:

And here's a link to the mental ray Workflows in Maya: Global Illumination course that was referenced in the video. That course can give you some great insight into setting up and optimizing your GI. Happy rendering!

[jonboris]

Hey thanks Dan!