Progressive VS. Bucket for Final

[glorybound]

Are the consensus, for final renderings stills, Bucket rendering is faster and the way to go?

[Morbid Angel]

I can never get progressive to render as efficiently as buckets so I never even bother with it.

[glorybound]

I am not seeing a difference in time, however, with defaults progressive seems to be cleaner. What isn't working for you with progressive?

[glorybound]

Originally I think I remember reading Progressive is faster and the way to go, but then lately I read to use Bucket rendering for finals.

[vjaramillo]

Progressive is much faster if you use it with Denoiser....I can render a large model in 20-40 min at 4k, compared to 1-2 hours with buckets.

[ntavian]

I am not seeing a difference in time, however, with defaults progressive seems to be cleaner. What isn't working for you with progressive?

what do you mean with defaults settings Progressive is cleaner, I can never get clean results, maybe I am not waiting long enough?

[glorybound]

Like VJ said, if used with Denoiser, you get clean images pretty fast.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Are the consensus, for final renderings stills, Bucket rendering is faster and the way to go?

Both of them has advantages and disadvantages. There are situations that progressive can be very useful, but for majority of my stills I use bucket mode, here is why
-Bucket mode has been always faster than progressive and it gives you cleaner results with the same noise threshold. Progressive and bucket produce different noise patterns, so comparing them you shouldn't rely on using the same noise threshold. Bucket mode is very good in cleaning noise, so comparing it to progressive you will have to use lower noise threshold, to match how clean it is compared to bucket.
Difference in speed is scene dependent. In my testing I've seen bucket mode being faster by 15% (making sure both renders are as clean)
Probably the reason behind this speed difference is that for Bucket mode it is easier for Vray to determine the right amount of samples, while for progressive, Vray will add more and more samples adaptively.
I've never seen a case where progressive has been faster than Bucket. I've also tested this in other renderers(Cycles4D/Redshift) and likewise, bucket mode has been always faster. But unlike other renderers, Vray is still extremely fast in progressive mode I find myself using it in some situations.
Like I said, this is not the case with other renderers that offer bucket/progressive options. They are terribly slow with progressive mode and they have big limitations so things will look different . For Cycles or RS, you have to use Bucket.
Back to advantages of bucket mode in Vray,
-Better utilization of your CPU(s).. So bucket mode will stress your CPU more than progressive, same for your GPUs if you are using Next GPU
-Works better with DR rendering, consuming less network traffic
-supports more features like Cryptomatte, Resumable rendering, Anti-Aliased render elements...
-uses less system RAM specially with high res renders, as the data gets stored directly on your hard drive, while in progressive everything is kept in system memory until the render finishes
-For things like high frequency details in bump mapping, you will be able to see the final result faster and you can make the buckets follow your mouse, while with progressive Vray will need much more time before you see the final look of your bump mapping

On the other hand, advantages of progressive mode,
-You can set a time limit for your render, but this is probably more useful for animation rendering.
-With progressive usually you can stop the render whenever you feel the image is clean enough (and maybe having the denoiser updating every few minutes until you like the result). And for people with slower machines, they would want to render over night, so they use .001 noise threshold and manually stop the render later.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

If someone has a scene that renders faster with progressive, would be nice to see.
And for what I do, I usually don't use denoiser. Renders are usually very fast on my machine and denoiser affects tiny details which is big deal

[Morne]

On the other hand, advantages of progressive mode,
-You can set a time limit for your render, but this is probably more useful for animation rendering.

That's only true if you're doing the animation on a single pc. Setting a time limit when using a farm, will give different results on each pc, especially different spec machines, meaning flicker deluxe

[dean_dmoo]

I ditched bucket about a 18 months ago. Too often ended up with a stuck bucket and/or renders were always longer. A 10 hour progressive at 0.005 noise would be an 18 hour bucket at 0.01 noise. Add in the denoiser and it makes the difference even bigger. (large scenes at 5k size)

[glorybound]

Okay, so I am correct in thinking there isn't a consensus.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

That's only true if you're doing the animation on a single pc. Setting a time limit when using a farm, will give different results on each pc, especially different spec machines, meaning flicker deluxe

Yup!
We have 7 1080Tis in one machine in office. Using this tool by Alex Kurcera to output multiple bat files, so each GPU will render a single frame(7 frames per 7 GPUs)
https://vrscenegui.babylondreams.de/index.html#home
This avoids the effect of stuck buckets or the slow down of loading the scene into VRAM(happens with other GPU renderers)
So usually each frame will take 40 to 50 seconds to render, but loading the scene into VRAM can take like a minute. So with each GPU working on a different frame, this saves a lot of render time.
But yeah, Bucket mode works better for DR and consumes less network traffic so all nodes will be utilized at 100% I usually avoid progressive mode with DR.

[squintnic]

Never got suitable and consistent results with progressive so always use bucket for finals. I actually don't know anyone that uses progressive !

[glorybound]

Sure you do. A couple people above do.