7 hours for a render.. help

[michaelinitaly]

I had test rendered the following image in less than a half hour a few weeks ago. In the mean time I have been doing every tut I can find to get a better image faster.. somewhere along the line I have changed something and my times have gotten out of control. I have to render an annimation so this time frame is out of the question. I have gone through and hidden everything out of site and collaped all objects to mesh. I have attached as much as I could.



The scene has 1,500,000 polygons, but only 250,000 are not hidden.



This is the image


and these are my settings. the sun settings are on the scene page



I included the raytrace because it was running and crashing the project even though all materials are vray. I keep gettin out of memory errors.

thanks for any advice

[maxim8er]

I don't see much on your render settings that would cause it to take so long to render although your secondary bounces seems a little high.

You do have quite a few polygons in there for a scene that doesn't look that complex so I would try to reduce that number as much as possible by optimizing some of your models. Also if you can try to replace modeled detail with texture maps.

How much ram do you have on your system. if you don't have much and the software has to start swapping to disk it will slow down the rendering process quite a bit.

check your materials again for anything that would be using the max raytracer. if its being used by a material or for a raytraced shadow, it will slow everything down.

Also check your materials for glossy reflections or refractions. if you have any and the subdivisions are kept at the default 50 your rendering will be slow.

I hope I haven't overlooked anything or forgot anything.

Good luck,

V Miller

[corey]

What are the settings for your vray lights?

Check to make sure that your vray lights are using the "Store with irradiance map".

Keep in mind that HSV color mapping will slow down your render times.

Also, a side note it looks like your floor is turned off, hidden, or deleted...

[michaelinitaly]

thanks..

I have a gig of ram with 3 gig swap. I have used the 3 gig option.
When I went to my lights, I realized that I had used some rad erco lights from nattys tutorial .
I have removed these and put vray lights and running a test now..I did not have the store with irradiance map check so that could have been the problem also..
I have seen HSV used in most tuts.. which setting would you suggest for the best time?

The high count in the scene is for the hidden objects.. I have a huge garden and pool that is used when the camera swings around.

I have looked at each material and they are all vray. Some where converted but I dont see andy raytrace material at all. I have turned off the raytracer, so it should not be slowing the render down, but I am concerned that what ever was triggering the raytracer, my be the hidden problem. Is there a way to search or tell which material is causing the problem?

Thanks for your help
Michael

[percydaman]

24 subdivs for your vray shadow seems high to me. I rarely go above say 12. Is it necessary for them to be that high for some reason?

[RoarK]

hi, i dunno abt the settings, but first...your image looks very "flat", i think you need to uncheck the "default lights" option under global switches setting, or to be sure just place an omni in the scene and keep it turned off, try rendering with linear color mapping with default settings and your secondary bounce multiplier...use subdivs 1 and depth 3, start with low settings and crank em up as you iterate them. good luck

[michaelinitaly]

thanks percy.. I have changed it..had not reason why it was 24.. guess I changed in when I was looking at a tutorial or something.. I am so new at vray that I have no reason for anything I do.. hmmm sounds like my life in general..
thanks.. I just stopped it after a hour and was already on 2 of 3 pass.. so I am ahead of the game already. I see some pretty complex stuff on some other pages with amazing times.. guess I have to dig into the model to get to more streamlined.

[tom schuelke]

Hi Your shadow settings are very very high. Lower them to about 12 ore maybe 15. (because you have a very big lamp with very soft shadows i understand they have to be higher than normaly.) with such a high amount and very soft shadows, you also should try another antialiasing algorithm. try simple two level. shadow is computed on a pixel base. in this case the usual algorithm as always with per pixel phenomenons like for example blurry reflections causes the algorithm to be slower than simple two level. we had a scene with about 6 billion polygons, changing the antialising from standart to simple two level made our rendertimes half as long.

did you use also standart max raytracing maps ?. Change each and every material to vray advanced.

together with vray lights you might try to use vray photonmapping for secoundary bounces and i-map for first bounce. used the right way this can speed up your rendertimes to a half ore a third .

don´t think, exposure control things does slow down significantly the renderprocess.

look at your face level coeeficient in the system settings. 0,5 is a bit low. 0,8 can speed up your rendering, but only when you´ve got very much ram. it depends on your computer if it is ok. if you´ve got 1 Gig ram, 0,8 is ok.

in secoundary bounces level try to use 1 / 4 ore 1 /3. 10 /3 is very unusual.

hope some of this helps.

Tom from Hamburg

www.lichtecht.de / com

[dusan]

Do you have any glossy reflections on your materials?

[michaelinitaly]

Dusan.. I only have Vray glass and I have added a standard reflection to the floor.. but the floor was missing eariler so dont think that is the probelm. All the materials are standard.

Tom... I have had no luck with photon mapping yet. I need to do a tutoral on it, I have downloaded nattys.. but have not had the time to go through it. Everytime I try it, it takes forever to run. I will try your setting and I like you have a gig so it should be ok.

Roark.. thanks.. I have made the changes you suggested.. with all the great help, looks like I will be able to sleep tonight with less stress.

thank you all..
l

[michaelinitaly]

Tom.. What did you mean by simple two level antialiase? I dont see that filter.. do you mean with area or Cook variable set to 2 filter?
thanks
michael

[tom schuelke]

Hi michaelinitaly

Well i am at Home right now and on my old privat machine i don´t have everything here to see it.

i´ll try it nevertheless

Antialiasing takes place in two parts of an image. at first the antialiasing for maps, like you said, for example cook...

what i mean is secound, the settings in the renderdialog of vray, that control the geometry antialiasing. there is a part, where you can use three possible antialiasingalgorithms for the geometry in your scene.

you find them: at the roll out in the renderdialog called:

image sampler (antialiasing.)....

the three methods are...... first, fixed rate
secound, simple two levels
third , adaptive subdevision

adaptive subdevision is the standard and is very very impressive fast in standard scenes with smooth geometry, hard corners, and no renderthings like softshadows, or glossy reflections/refractions.
it analyses the corners of your geometry, and only refines your antialiasing at the nescessary corners.

but when you get pixelrendering effects like blurry reflections, very many smal details, ore maybe huge softshadows, this changes.

in this case adaptive subedevision antialiasing, analises until end of day´s , it takes more time to analyse in this case, as to take a usualy slower less analytical method.

in this case you shoud try the secound method, simple two levels.

use for example following settings: base subdev. 1 fine subdev. 4
threshold 0,05, this should work fine, try to change it if it is not fast enough ore not good enough in result.

antialiasing is a very huge timeeater, and good settings can save much time.

by the way the antialiasing of vray is one of the best at all sharper than finalrender, and much faster as brazil

vray is a grate renderer, and its devellopment is still making giant steps, as you may see in the anouncements.

much fun with it.

Tom

www.lichtecht.de /com

[michaelinitaly]

Thank you tom for that well thought out answer... I am trying the new settings now. Thanks to everyone I am down to 2 hours for a render, still working on the lighting and will post when I have that figured out.
Can any give me a ballpark time frame I should shoot for in this type of scene? The kitchen is all one peice 64573 so I guess it should take some time, but is two hours too long?
thank you all again
michael

[jacksc02]

what size frame are you rendering to?