Lots of light bulbs, made as copies instead of instances and render times (Noob)

[Anonymous]

To keep it short, I made an animated scene with a bunch of little light bulbs, probably with more faces than they need. I believe all of the bulbs were created as copies instead of instances. Does this effect render times? Is it worth the time to replace them with an instance?

[Anonymous]

I have wonder the same thing and my answer would be yes, as in the render times would be longer. Here is why I think it this. 3ds Max is able to handle instance a lot better then copies. Instances allows you to have one object with all the other instances as just reference. Copies are a lot more memory intensive in that they require there own space of memory. The copy duplicates all of the data of the original object. When rendering I assume it will have to read each individual space of data instead of just referencing the original data. Making the render times longer. As far as is it worth your time redoing it all depends on you and how much time you have.

Hope this answer your question...

Good Luck!

[CAMedeck]

BannerBoy,

In the long run, my answer would be yes, make them all instances versus copies.  And the great thing is, this is a very easy process.  Ideally, you would want to isolate just those objects you want to replace, then select one of them and use the Clone and Align tool (Tools menu, Align, Clone and Align).  This will take your selected object and allow you to clone it, as an instance, and align those clones to other selected objects.  With the other bulbs isolated, you can easily use the Pick List option and select them all.  The great thing about this tool is that it can rotate and scale the instances to match the target objects.

Once you have all of the instances created, select the others and delete them. Now if you decide to edit one, they will all be affected.

[BenBisares]

Just to add onto camedeck's response. Instancing lights will not have any significant difference in render times as opposed to copies as the light ray calculations would still be calculated for each light.

[kgokhangurbuz]

Hi;

Apart from @CAMedeck's reply, i'd like to mention that; if you are a V-Ray user, Probabilistic Lights (For more information, please read: Chaos Group Help - Probabilistic Lights) feature of V-Ray is helpful with the scenes that have too many light sources.

Regards;

[CAMedeck]

A warning about using the Probabilistic Lights option... It essentially ignores some lights.  This is great when your scene is a wide open space, or single room.  However, if you have modeled a full building with multiple rooms that are all independently lit, you may get some inconsistencies in your lighting.  I had an experience where a hallway was poorly lit using PLights, but looked great when I disabled it.

Probabilistic Lights is not for every scene.