City Light at night

[Fred.M]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a music video with a big city at night, and I'm wondering how to make a realistic light from the ground with a render time of 2 minutes max by frame.
My current setup consist of a big rectangle corona light pointing towards but I feel there is another way but don't know which one.
Here is an exemple of my scene, (not fully finished, missing lots of neons and stuff).

I'm french so excuse my bad english.

Thanks :) 

Fred.

[maru]

First of all, I would definitely recommend using self illumination for the buildings, instead of light mtl (not sure what you are using right now): https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515603
You could then place a Corona light, or a few standard 3ds Max lights below the ground (they would probably render a bit faster as they are not physically accurate), and then exclude the ground from that bottom light.

[Fred.M]

The buildings have self illum mtl.

Good idea for the max lights, I will try this !