Vray realistic lighting

Hi guys,

We have a current project that requires realistic lighting. They sent us their lighting plan for an interior with hundreds of lights: LED, down lights, and adjustable lights. add to that, most of the materials are glass, mirror, marble and aluminum.
We are using Vray1.5 and Max 2011. First test, with all of the lights (ies) on the plan added to the scene, had 70+hrs est time.

How would you proceed with a project like this? The client really wants his lighting plans followed, so we have to use ies lights.
With a tight deadline and a perfectionist client...im thinking of quitting my job. lol.
Any tips would be highly appreciated...

Thanks!

Rig specs?..

use a lighting software e.g. Relux or Dialux it will give you a realistic effects and true value of your lighting.

@cloud20 rig specs: core 2 quad, 8gb ram, vcard: Radeon Force3D HD 4670

@edoysala: thanks! will check relux/dialux

Cheat!

Its just a visual presentation, you can cheat by not following all the lighting location. Just use what you think is enough light for the scene. Fake the rest.

Best is just follow all the ies, the rest will be just vray light rectangle.

the long render times can be caused not by lights itself but by other factors such as the sampling algorhythms or the anti-aliasing.

It is always best to test light your scene using a global material first.
Adjust the shadow samplings, the image sampler values (min/max) and lastly, the DMC sampler value.

If all persists, check the glossiness value at the material level.

Anything that falls below .8 should have a value of 32 upwards.

thanks for all the suggestions
here's what we're did: we rendered first with low resolution using all their ies lights.so we know how the lighting design looks like and just 'faked' it using simpler vray lights thanks bokkins sa suggestion

GREAT!