Rendering times

[Pixelcon]

Lol I give up, I have more meaningful conversations with ChatGPT.

Perhaps it is ChatGPT...

[JuhaHo]

Perhaps it is ChatGPT...

Who - me? I don't think my English skills are that good.

I thought this was simple topic. Do we generate more invoiceable content today with the latest technology, than we did some thirty years ago? Am I the only one around who give this a second thought.

[Pixelcon]

Who - me?

Exactly the sort of thing a cunning AI might say...

[JuhaHo]

Exactly the sort of thing a cunning AI might say...

Maybe I should create an account to test it. The quotes I've seen in our language makes me think, it's not very clever yet. Based on phrasing, I'd say it's a child. Maybe it'll be more clever in thirty years, but I bet it won't reply within a week by then.

[glorybound]

Are you using default settings or are you trying to optimize yourself? Are you actually rendering or looking at the estimated render time? When I started in the early 90s, my renders took days. Today, nothing takes more than an hour, and this in on a laptop. My clients never question the noise in the shadows, so I have learned to be okay with it, too. I never wait until the render is "done". I hit render due some chores or go for a walk, and stop it after an hour.

[Joelaff]

I think most of us push the quality and bell and whistles up until the render time is just barely tolerable. So things never really get faster, only have more features.

[JuhaHo]

Are you using default settings or are you trying to optimize yourself? Are you actually rendering or looking at the estimated render time? When I started in the early 90s, my renders took days. Today, nothing takes more than an hour, and this in on a laptop. My clients never question the noise in the shadows, so I have learned to be okay with it, too. I never wait until the render is "done". I hit render due some chores or go for a walk, and stop it after an hour.

I'm using mostly default and built in settings for renderer, lights and materials. However I let renderer finish the tasks so I get a copy in framebuffer. Then maybe months later, when I'm told to change my model, I just do region render on the changed portion.

I would say, the built in Steel Blurry material is tough. I tested also MDL brushed metal. It looks nice, but is even more slow. Mostly the geometry is acid resistant steel. Sometimes it's painted and then I use built in paint settings.

Speaking of paints, I have not yet found a proper formula for powder coat paint material. Should I start another thread on that, or is there quick instructions?

[JuhaHo]

I think most of us push the quality and bell and whistles up until the render time is just barely tolerable. So things never really get faster, only have more features.

Of course another question is what we mean by quality. I'm not looking nice renderings. I'm looking technical accuracy instead and that's what I call quality. For instance, if the main paint color for a client is, lets say RAL 7012, I'll make sure it's precisely that on the rendering. I render as close as I can and the tune up in Photoshop L*a*b* color space. Then I tell the client to use their own marketing resources to tune up the image more if they want to.

Many times my renderings don't look nice at all.

[fixeighted]

As mentioned in your initial post, and I'll bet a shiny new penny on it, it is the highlights, and the inter-reflection of those highlights, that cause excessive render times, for which a solution was suggested.
Simply waiting for a 24 hour render to complete, without investigating why it takes so long, doesn't seem to me to be a very productive method

[JuhaHo]

Yes,

And the rendering times blew up, when the client said they want much much more highlights.

[glorybound]

That is where render elements come in. Render a reflective and specular pass, which can be used in post-prodcution to boost those highlights.

[JuhaHo]

That is where render elements come in. Render a reflective and specular pass, which can be used in post-prodcution to boost those highlights.

Yes, but wouldn't that need highlights to boost. The geometry I'm rendering, is mostly planar metallic surfaces. To have some highlights, I use large scale bump maps and additional lights to generate highlights. Painted surfaces are not an issue, since there's small scale bump map making the surface to collect light from various directions.

[JuhaHo]

I have another one. My main workstation just finished rendering a scene in 28 hours and 30 minutes to resolution of 3508 x 2480. I hope the client won't blow up the scene too many times.

[JuhaHo]

There's a new one. Just finished regular a4-size rendering to time 77 hours 33 minutes and 15 seconds. OK it was my HP Zbook mobile workstation having Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2186M CPU @ 2.90GHz. But still it took quite long time to finish.

While writing this, I just got message from client side telling there are issues which require rerendering.

[JezUK]

I'm new to this thread, I don't post much these days, but man, 77.5 hours for a render? Really? Of course it all depends on what you're rendering and to what resolution, but mine are typically around 5mins (usually a *lot* less than that, i.e. a couple of minutes).