lighting tutorial

[mikeh]

Got the latest Vray newsletter and in it was a link to a lighting tutorial. I downloaded the files to the tutorial, opened up the first finished file and simply rendered it to see how long the render would take. 4 hours and 48 minutes later the render was finished. The machine I used is a dual quad. My thinking is this...the render time is fine for a hobbiest but for someone doing this for a living, the time is way too long. Granted, I do only exteriors for the AEC industry and am not used to what it takes to do interiors but a time like that would never work in my schedule. Is this typical of what people who do interiors experience? And if so, how do they make any money at it. My clients would never pay for such extreme render times.
mh

[cheerioboy]

5 hours is reaching the longest I'll allow a render to be - typically I'd want my renderings around 2.5 - but there are so many variables; scene complexity, resolution, & render settings - I might end up sacrificing one of the three if the render time takes too long.

[Neilg]

It's not particularly well optimised - it's a very safe setup.

[Morne]

maximum about 1 hour for exteriors (included LOTS of trees and flowers) (at 4K) - aerial shots
Interiors average about 3 to 5 hours also at 4K, but I've had some complex ones take 7 - 10 hours at same res...

...and as cheerioboy says, sometimes you have to sacrifice something to get times down

[glorybound]

I recently purchased Evermotion's Exterior Vol.18, and let me tell you about heavy screen! Not only is every settings extremely high, everything is a proxy. it'll probably be the last Evermotion library I purchase. It's best to build your own materials, and setup your own scene. You don't know what kind of machines these were built using, and rendered on. (http://www.evermotion.org/modelshop/...-18/10148/0/0/)

1600 x 1168 - building light cache... 86 hours! Now, I have about 100Gb, across 6 i7's, so I am not a light weight.

[Morne]

1600 x 1168 - building light cache... 86 hours! Now, I have about 100Gb, across 6 i7's, so I am not a light weight.

Did you actually finish rendering this scene? I often get LC calc estimates with proxies and displacement peaking around cazillion hours, but then after 5 or 10 minutes the estimate rapidly drops and eventually takes about 20 to 30 min

[Guest]

Got the latest Vray newsletter and in it was a link to a lighting tutorial. I downloaded the files to the tutorial, opened up the first finished file and simply rendered it to see how long the render would take. 4 hours and 48 minutes later the render was finished. The machine I used is a dual quad. My thinking is this...the render time is fine for a hobbiest but for someone doing this for a living, the time is way too long. Granted, I do only exteriors for the AEC industry and am not used to what it takes to do interiors but a time like that would never work in my schedule. Is this typical of what people who do interiors experience? And if so, how do they make any money at it. My clients would never pay for such extreme render times.
mh

As cubiclegangster mentioned, the scene was not set up with optimisation in mind. I used settings that I use on a regular basis for interior renders as I know I get good results in a reasonable time. Please keep in mind if you render the final scene, there is an AO pass using VRayExtraTex there which will almost double your rendering time. This method for generating AO is the simplest but not great for render times.

[glorybound]

No, after 24hrs, and 24 remaining, I stopped it.

[mikeh]

As cubiclegangster mentioned, the scene was not set up with optimisation in mind. I used settings that I use on a regular basis for interior renders as I know I get good results in a reasonable time. Please keep in mind if you render the final scene, there is an AO pass using VRayExtraTex there which will almost double your rendering time. This method for generating AO is the simplest but not great for render times.

I wonder what sort of time it would take to render it if someone who has Solid Rocks used it to optimize the scene? For me, an interior lighting tutorial would be one that shows how to optimize the scene AND get a reasonable but not perfect result.
mh

[glorybound]

AO pass using VRayExtraTex there which will almost double your rendering time.

Interesting that you said that. I can have 3-4 AO passes, which I use on most projects, and all with different radiuses. I never thought it would double times, or in my case triple them. I have seen script that create the AO pass, but I never saw the need, since you can use the VRayExtraTex. But, having read your comment, I might try them. My question would be why does the script render the AO pass in minutes, and the VRayExtraTex double render times? I just stopped my current render, removed all my passes, and I'll see how many savings I get. If using the AO script makes more sense, I'll change my workflow.

[Neilg]

I think if you render them as a separate pass it's faster - the AA & sampling is calculated from the base image, so when it's an element it samples the AO more than is necessary in places.

I still do it as an element though because our render times are low and it's easier that way.

[glorybound]

Usually, I render over night, so render times don't bother me. I do stills, so 8-12 hour render times mean nothing. Now, having said that, my current scene took 12hrs to get 1/2 way done. So, I am looking into ways to optimize the scene. I turned off Displacement, which I need, but I just wanted to see, and my render times were 2 hours. I am optimizing in other places, so I can turn the displacement back on, and still get decent render times. It would be great if displacement could modify the geometry so it's no longer done at render time. I read something about this awhile back, or maybe it was a dream .

[Neilg]

are you using 3d or 2d displacement?

If you're using 3d, the default settings arent well optimised. If you subdivide the mesh of the object and keep the max subdivisions between 16 and 32 (or lower) it'll be much faster and use less memory. if you have a new modifier for each object that uses the same displacement map it slows it down too - you should attach them to one edit poly.

[glorybound]

I instance 2D displacement at 512. They are all walls - siding material. I select all the walls, add one 2d displacement modifier on them all.

are you using 3d or 2d displacement?

If you're using 3d, the default settings arent well optimised. If you subdivide the mesh of the object and keep the max subdivisions between 16 and 32 (or lower) it'll be much faster and use less memory. if you have a new modifier for each object that uses the same displacement map it slows it down too - you should attach them to one edit poly.

[Neilg]

I select all the walls, add one 2d displacement modifier on them all.

It's still separate objects. attach them all to one.