Render time for 4K projects compared to 1080p.

[jstrob]

Hi,

I would like to have an opinion from V-Ray artists about how you estimate render time for project in 4K versus 1080p. I get more and more request for VR projects requesting to be rendered in 4K at 60 fps... instead of 1080p ? 24 fps. And they are crazy enough to ask if I can do those for even less money that I did 1080p projects!

This business is becoming less and less paying it seem.

But the way I estimate it is: since a 4k frame is 4,27 times bigger, due to ram bottle neck can easily take 5 times longer to render. And then if you want 60 fps instead of just 24, it will take 2,5 times more time. So 5 x 2.5 = 12,5 times longer to render. And that's not even counting that some render node will not even be able to participate in these 4k frames since they will be brought to their knees due to lack of ram and cpu power.

So how could we suddenly be able to deliver something that takes a minimum of 12,5 times more to render for the same price and less??? Are my calculation correct or what??

I know vray is faster now in some situations, but some other situations are not so faster and the denoiser is not always good enough for animation I think.

Does anyone here accept to do jobs in 4K 60 fps?

[Neilg]

We do - but the only way we do them is by getting a low res locally rendered sequence signed off first, rendering the 4k version on Amazon ec2 and passing the costs onto the client plus an hourly rate of us having to manage it.
last 4k job we did 720p rendering was 'free' in our costs, and the 4k version we estimated at 20-30k extra. They still went for it.
With 200 top end xeons from Amazon, frames that would have taken 4 hours locally and max out our ram were being rendered in 20 minutes.

The biggest issue is scenes that used to fit into our framebuffer and displacement that sat in a reasonable amount of ram just don't at 4k. We'd have to spend an outrageous sum of money upgrading our farm for it, so we decided that for huge animations we'll start charging for rendering as a separate line item and go all cloud. You'll need faster internet though.

[jstrob]

Hi Neilg, good idea. If my clients were willing to pay 20-30k extra I could maybe upgrade my render farm but that would become more of a hassle to manage. I'm suprised that in your experience with amazon EC2 you could get so much extra speed.

I think most client just don't realized how much 4K is bigger than 1080p and even more than 720p. Cause in the end most of the time it's not that much of a difference visually on a tv screen.

[squintnic]

Like Neil we don't go above 1920x1080 for architectural animations in-house and when we do its outside of scope, extra cost and an EC2 thing....plus you will need a 500mbps to 1000mbs up AND down connection to move that data about.
For short product based 15-30 second spots we can do 4k inhouse but complex architectural scenes can get so bloody heavy once you have cars, people, plants etc.
For us to be doing 4k stereo stuff at 60fps would require a huge investment in new gear including a new network and render nodes.

If I was you I would just upres it with a bit of selective sharpening and no one will know....!

[jstrob]

Yes upresing is definetely something I would think of. Since anyone using a standard sized room on even a full wall sized tv or projection screen will not notice the difference I think. I have a full wall projector in HD and when I watched some quality footage like the Planet Earth tv for example, I can barely noticed the difference between 720p and 1080p. On the other hand a crappy footage even in 4K will always look crappy!

BTW, I'm wondering if Chaosgroup could one day develop some kind of uprezing process similar to the denoiser, using all the V-Ray Raw elements to make a better upresing. It could be even more unoticable!