Hi ,
I have a contract to achieve of a vacation house in the middle of a forest. This is not my first nature scene done in 3dsmax but i still havent found the secret of rendering those type of scenes. It wont be a video , just render frames and my client wants realistic renders… Here are my questions:
Lighting:
I experimented lighting solutions with E-light already , pretty quick , looks good…but i can’t put my shadows to ray traced cause my render will last forever… I downloaded a script called Xshadows to remain to this render time problem but the shadows just won’t work , it just does the same as shadow map , displaying all my plane’s leafs.
I know GI with final gather is really cool…for architechtural project mainly , but it good for nature too?
Grass & leaves:
I found many solutions making grass , hair n fur , planes , even 3 sided cylinder but it cost hell alot of memory… witch one is the best regarding quality / render time?
same thing for tree leaves , should i use single leaves? branches? or hair fur?
Ambiant occlusion:
Doing it for my structure is really cool…but what about my leaves? if they’re all planes itll do a really bad result…
and compositing it may look wierd , having AO on everything and my nature’s all bright…
Scanline or mental ray? 
Alright so thats pretty mutch it , im using Max 8 and got a radeon 9800 pro with 2.8 ghz intel pentium , 1 gig ram
i don’t mind how long the render last , as long as it happens within the same hour , i just want good results that works!