My current project involves getting an existing area inside a virtual space. It’s a work in progress and some of the lightmaps need redoing in places.
I’m not sure why, but it runs noticeably faster in the editor than it does in the web player.
Lightmap only version (if the above runs too slowly)
Looking good so far! Few suggestions: it looks like most of your light is being calculated from an untextured model. It’s got that dirty AO look to it. I’d highly recommend baking your lighting with the textures on to get more color bouncing around in there. Your samples look really low and I assume that’s a result of being WIP. Crank those up and it’s going to look really nice. Adding an invisible ramp collider to the steps would also be a big plus. It’s kinda jarring going up and down them right now.
Yes, that’s right. I do my lightmaps with a neutral colour on all the surfaces. I had a big problem with colour bleeding in vray, I’ll sort it out eventually, and this seemed like the best way to deal with it. The white surfaces definitely show the ‘dirt’ more clearly so, at least for those, I’ll find a solution.
I tried to deal with the dirtmap by increasing the number of subdivisions, currently at 24, but the rendering time goes through the roof. It’s the first real lightmap I’ve done with vray so with some more experience I’m confident I can overcome it.
The steps are a bit jerky and the collision mesh does need some more work.
Thanks for the tips :]
Edit:
I’ve uploaded a webplayer with the lightmap, this runs extremely smoothly. You can see it by clicking below.
Hello Zante. Your work is great and inspiring. Wanna be friends? I have same the purpose as you. I am too trying to do various visualizations using 3dsMax and Vray. You can find my example here http://www.erebuni.ee/F1.html (currently i am working on this project. Creating more rooms and stairs to the second floor. I want to create virtual gallery)
We could team up and share experience and knowledge. I am not very familiar with Vray and i do everything on trial and error. We could both save a lot of time by learning from each other. 
Right now the visuals are looking great. I suggest to play around with player gravity cause i had some trouble getting up the stairs.
Good luck,
Karel
I don’t have any objection to becoming friends with more people here. ;p
Regarding vray, my rendering settings need optimizing and it appears as though I’ve made an embarrassing mistake as to which subdivision samples needed changing.
It seems as though I should have been paying attention to the subdivs for the ambient occlusion/dirtmap rather than for the individual lights. I can probably cut my rendering time down to 1/5 of what it was now. It shouldn’t have to take 4 days this time.
That sorts out the grain problem on the white surfaces.
Edit: The brute force setting also seems responsible for the grainy look. Not sure how to weigh up the benefits between that and the light cache mode which is much faster.
Brute Force GI is my problem, need to change the subdivs there.
If anyone’s interested, I’ve just found a great guide at the following url
http://vray.us/vray_documentation/vray_light_cache_examples.shtml