Outdoor Lighting

[Fio003]

This year we are doing a considerable portion of our animation in an outdoors setting; whats the best lighting set-up for this kind of thing? Our animation is realistic, and will vary from dawn to dusk (though all in different scenes, so it doesn't have to be dynamic). We haven't decided between MR and Scanline, but it will probably be largely influenced by this factor.

Last year (iirc) we used MentalRay's GI and a self-illuminated semi-sphere along with some other minor lights, which worked okay but seemed to be washed out and take longer to render than it was worth.

By the way, we have the resources to have a reasonably lengthy render time, though obviously I would like to keep it low.