Why so long?

[Arkitec]

I am back on the airport project and have added more detail and a bunch of lights. I have a total of 1198342 faces.

Below are a couple of screen shots. Rendering at 320 x 240 is taking forever, its already been two hours and its not even 1/4 way done.

Can someone see anything I am doing wrong?

I have set several materials with reflections as seen below for the Terrazo Material.
Thank you for any help.

Arkitec




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[Intenzity]

First thing I see is if your using reflections and leaving the default settings you could be in for a very long render. Subdivisions at 50 is very high, maybe 10 is good enough. Same if your using any refraction.

-Andrew

[DP]

things to try that may help

if you have glossy reflections/refractions drop your glossiness subdivs on your materials to 10 (you may even get away with less)....just increase them until you lose the noise.

drop your hsph. subdivs in your render settings to 30, or less, increase if you see artifacting

try dropping the subdivs on the vray lights as well, to 10 or something, then up them if you see noise.

in render settings, global switches try limiting your reflection bounce to 1

try simple two level AA on either 1 & 4 or 2 & 4...see if that helps.

[UBIKmh]

Did you check 'convert to irr map' for your Vray lights?


Marc

[jujubee]

One thing I'm wondering about- too many edges on the chairs- especially if they are not going to be seen. Knock them out unless you have to do an animation...

[lordshaitan]

Also, it looks as though your rendering the outside and maybe the insdie in one pass?

Try to render the outside and inside seperatly. For sake of reflections put a image plane in the background on the inside render so that the planes would be reflectied correctly. It looks as though alot of your faces have to due with the buildings.

[s0real]

is the model AutoCAD solids?

it looks as if you've imported the model as a .3DS.

have you tried file linking the model direct from the CAD file rather than importing it?

if you link the file there will be fewer polys displayed in the viewports, making the lighting setup easier to work on IMO.

also, try checking 'save to irradiance map' on the Vray lights to reduce render time.

hope this helps...

[flipside]

First thing I see is if your using reflections and leaving the default settings you could be in for a very long render. Subdivisions at 50 is very high, maybe 10 is good enough. Same if your using any refraction.

-Andrew

This is not necessary with glossy set to 1.0

I see you have really a lot vray lights, are they all necessary? Are you trying to light the whole scene by placing more and more lights in places where you find it a bit too dark? I think you could get away with much less lights.

If you need them all, make sure you use low subdivs on the lights shadow parameters (something like 3, it makes a hge difference compared to 8 or 10). Also check 'store with irradiance map' for all vraylights that don't need to cast very detailed shadows (by doing this, the lighting info will be calculated during IR map calculation and while rendering there are no shadows etc calculated because it's already been done. But you'll loose shadow detail because this is now dependant on your IR map settings)

What is taking long, the IR map calculation or the rendering itsself?

[dusan]

Glossy subdivisions don't play a role if glossy is set to 1.0 (off), but you might have some other materials like floors or even wall panels or something, that are taking a large percentage of the image, with such high subd settings that would prolong your rendering times considerably. But this would only happen in the actuall rendering pass. Those two irradiance map passes shouldn't be a problem because they are really very low, at that resolution - good for previewing only.
Render first with GI off, see how long that takes. I'm not really getting your lights setup. Try deleting those fill lights in the middle of the scene, render then, and add them afterwards if you really can't brighten it with exposure and regular lights. Also, id first try adding big vray lights as fill lights on all the windows, that should look more natural than those floating lights.

You could render the background separatly, try higing the actual building and render only grass, planes and sky from the same camera point you would use in interiors and then just put those images as a background.

[Arkitec]

Ok, Here I go....

I took the advice of lowering the subdivisions on all of my reflective materials to 20. I also reduced my HSPH divs to 30. I also checked all the vray lights to store with Irradiance Map. Time dropped off to about 5 minutes for a 320 x240.....which is what I was looking for. Some of this was done before the conversation took place about Glossy subdivisions not playing a role if glossy is set to 1.0 (off). This leaves me to believe that dropping the hsph divs to 30 and storing the lights in the irradiance map is what reduced the time.

Jujubee, when you say "knock them out" concerning edges do you mean to optimize the geometry? Obviously, I need the chairs in the scene so I just can remove them... Could you explain?

lordshaitan

Try to render the outside and inside seperatly. For sake of reflections put a image plane in the background on the inside render so that the planes would be reflectied correctly. It looks as though alot of your faces have to due with the buildings.

What is the reasoning for this? As you can see the only things on the outside of the building are the airplanes, I used a basic image for the environment background.....And yes, Im an Architect so all of my projects deal with buildings.

sOreal, the model was imported from FORMZ. But yes, I do import by .3ds. I can export via dwg and trying linking if that would reduce the amount of triangulation per geometry. Ive seen some screen shots out there that dont have this, my assumption was people were modeling most of there scenes within max or viz. Any other thoughts out there to reduce the geometry other than using "optimize?"


Flipside, Ive only placed lights for each pendant fixture and several fill lights. I would prefer to use IES data lights, but I think the vray lights end up rendering much faster. The rendering is what was taking so long, not the calculation.

Thank you everyone for taking the time out of your schedule to help me.....I very much appreciate everyone's input.

Thanks again,

Arkitec

[flipside]

Is the new result looking good with the new settings? If you loose shadows detail, just uncheck 'store...' for some vray lights but then make sure you don't use too high subdivs on the shadows.

flipside

[s0real]

if you have to import from 3ds or whatever, you can get good optimization results if you check the 'auto edge' 'material boundries' and 'smooth boundries' boxes

i wouldn't recommend exporting to dwg then re-importing...

you'll probably get problems with the model if you import/export too much...

[Arkitec]

Here are the updated images. I used DR to render, took about 6 minutes an image with 4 computers working on a 720x468 image.
C&C welcome.





Arkitec

[dusan]

Didn't turn out very well... Lighting is not flat and can pass, but it looks very artificial, i see no GI, and you have a lot of burned out areas. Tiling is very noticable on the last image, both on floor and the pillar.

[Arkitec]

dusan,

Thanks for your response. Could you explain what you mean by "lighting is not flat and can pass, but it looks artificial"

All of the lighting is artificial florescents, I dont think I understand what you mean.

I have GI turned on and set to 1, I havent seen to many posts with higher than one, whats your experience with higher settings. The burned out ceiling was requested by the lead architect to remain (against my recommendation).

Seamless tiles have always been a big problem for me, whether I modify in PS to make tiling or use a program like photoseam, I have never gotten the hang of it. Any suggestions to help out?

Thanks

Arkitec