I did a test of a 3d model built in autocad and exported out to .3ds and imported into vue. I left all the materials as basic colors, left the atmosphere as a standard atmosphere and did some test renders for the various lighting qualities.

Standard lighting - 0hrs 1min 11sec
Global Ambiance - 0hrs 1min 17sec
Global Illumination - 0hrs 18min 9sec
Radiosity (no indirect lighting or indirect reflections) - 0hrs 55min 19sec
Radiosity (both indirect lighting and reflections) - 1hr 10min 01sec

A couple of things that will help overall, don't use radiosity with mixed water materials, this causes severe time lags due to the renderer having to bounce two rays off of each of the mixed materials. Also, for outdoor scenes unless you really really have to, don't bother with Radiosity, Global Illumination is usually sufficient for those. The final tip, most of us are used to dialing up the ambient lighting influence to 100% for the sun, in order for GI and Radiosity to be most effective, the slider should be closer to 30-40% ambient influence.

Message edited on: 09/30/2004 19:15