Energy efficiency

[Carbonflux]

Words escape me, this is very photo real, in fact how normal it looks makes it seem even more impressive. I like how you sighed it also, it breaks the forth wall in a interesting way.

*bows to the master*

[SATtva]

Carbonflux, Chiaroscuro, thank you for your compliments. In fact, it's your works that i find inspiring in technical excellence and balance of light. Unfortunately, didn't had time to render it further, still some VPU left here and there (mirrors and roughglass are especially hard in that).

[Fax]

Wow, very impressive! I'm very interested in the technique SATtva, did you just set up the scene normally and trusted that it would look fine once you rendered the lat-longs, or were there special things to consider?
Fantastic job!

[SATtva]

Well, just modelled, ran a few tests and rendered. The real story was a bit longer of course -- first of all we discovered that client's flash engine is incapable to work with equirectangular projection and supports cylindrical panoramas (horizontal 360°) only which aren't realistic to produce inside such a confined rooms without cutting out all the ceiling and floor along with most interior object. So in the end the client had to switch to another engine which doesn't supports equirectangular projection too, but do supports cubic projection, and i had to use Hugin (its nona utility specifically) to convert equirectangular images into cubic ones.

[th3amaz3mak3r]

Nice work, but there's one thing that's bugging me. In the Entrance image, i have seen that textures are a bit stretched, the floor textures. I tried not to notice it but it was hard to ignore. Otherwise, it is an awesome scene.

[Chiaroscuro]

th3amaz3mak3r, perhaps you are referring to the rectangular views, that distortion is due to the panorama. Try using the suggested viewing tool.
BTW nearly empty SLG scene with really high refresh (low ms) also works to view these 360 panoramas.

In fact those would make really great environment HDRIs for details shots...
Jeez, even the jpegs at the top of this thread gives good lighting and reflections! (quick and dirty SLG2):

[SATtva]

Niiiice! Just don't use them for commercial purposes please.

Actually th3amaz3mak3r is right. Although it's a quite good commercial texture, it doesn't supposed to be used in such close-ups, so a bit blurry, yes.

[Ronibfr]

Satva, this is disturbingly awesome! So awesome that i had to google a new word to describe it!

[SATtva]

Thanks!