In one video we had numerous solar fields of various types, with tens of thousands of photovoltaic and hundreds of curved solar arrays. It was a challenge to manage the models and keep the polygons as light as possible so that the scenes loaded quickly and rendered fast. The above shows different areas highlighted in colors. A b/w satellite image was used as a background and as part of a flight to the remote location.
The curved solar panels are animated to follow the sun in the video we produced.
A closer view, with a vehicle for scale.
Above is the final video for the client, and below is a rendering test we did on a different project.
This isn’t the final video for the client, but gives you an idea of one segment, a test done with Iray instead of mental ray.