Animation frame render times

[paulison]

Hi,

Im rendering an animation at 720x576 at the moment and although I thought my settings were optimised for fairly quick render-times, each frame is now taking about 30-40mins (was only 15 mins at the start). This thing is due in 48 hours and its only 30 seconds, but I need to find a few ways to speed it up. My target is 20 mins or less because ihave other things to render on the farm as well.

Let me just describe the scene rather than post an image (I cant post this one). It is a generic shopping centre photo shop fitout with a lot of bright colours and glossy surfaces. I would like to keep noise fairly low but the hard deadline is 48 hours so I'm prepared to lower settings now to meet this timeframe.

Im using adaptive QMC 1-4 with Mitchell Netravali for AA

IR+LC for global illumination (do the primary/secondary multiplier values effect speed?)

min -4, max -2. Hsubs 70, interp 30, clr threth 0.3, nrm thresh 0.2, dist 0.1, density based. Im using multiframe incremental

1500Subdivs, 60mm sample size, world, 4 passes, flythrough for LC

QMC sampler adaptive amount 0.4, noise threshold 0.002, 16 min samples, 1.0 global subdivs multiplier

I think those are the main settings, if you can think of any other settings to fiddle with to speed things up, please let me know!!

Thanks in advance,

Paul

PS: ive spent almost an hour searching the forum for help on this but havnt really found much regarding settings for interior LC animations.

[paulison]

changed the adaptive amount for QMC noise settings from 0.4 to 0.9 and its about twice as fast. Hopefully the quality difference isnt noticable because some frames are done with 0.4 and the rest will be 0.9 :P

Anyone got any experience with this that can share?

[trick]

And change sample lookup from density-based to overlapping and see if it still suits your needs...
Do you use LC for glossy rays ?

[RErender]

Do you have moving objects? If not, using saved Imaps and LC will save a ton of time.

[flipside]

Was going to suggest the adaptive amount but you already found it

Together with rerenders advice, try lowering the hsph to 50 and see if it's enough. Also set clr th=0.35 or even 0.4. Good change you won't notice the difference in your GI detail and it will save you at least 1/3th of your IR map pass time.

Then change noise th in QMC sampler settings to 0.005. For an animation this will do and it will cut down rendertimes alot.

Remember to see it from a clients point of view, they don't notice the noise difference on glossies between 0.005 or 0.002, especially not on an animation.

Render at 3/4th or 4/5th of your output size and resize in post. No one will notice it.

[jujubee]

Kill your minimum samples. 16 I find is way too high for a small render - if its that important you can bring it down to 12 - my understanding this is the minimum amount of samples all your materials will have (ie. glossy noise.)

Also, dont forget to check your light settings. The default 150 is waaaaay too high.

[paulison]

thanks guys,

Im using saved Imaps. frame times are still 30-40mins a frame now its got into the really glossy area even with 0.004 for noise, 0.9 for adaptive and 8 samples. Since ive already prerendered the GI for every 5th frame, the Irradiance map settings shouldnt effect things now right?

I'll try overlapping for the lookup method but how much time would this save?. Going to raise noise a bit more as well. Changing the light settings wont effect anything now will since ive precalced the irmap?

[flipside]

Lookup type won't matter, that's already done.

Only the interpolation settings can make a difference now but there are no real timesavers there.

Did you use 'store with it map' on the lights or not, or are they max lights? If you didn't use store, or if they are max light, changing the shadow subdivs can save you lots of time, at the cost of more noise in the shadows. (direct light is not stored in the IR map, unless you use 'store direct light' in the LC settings, or 'store with ir map' in the lights settings)

How many subdivs do you have on your glossy materials? Maybe lower them too. Or lower all subdivs globally in the qmc sampler settings: subdivs multiplier. Since you already calculated GI this won't affect the GI quality.

[paulison]

yes i have some vray lights and some max ies lights using shadow map. I didnt take note of the subdivs on them though . fairly sure I had "store direct light" ticked in the LC settings. I guess ill have to check this for the next animation I do.

the glossy materials generally have between 8-25 subdivs. I think next time with this kind of deadline i'll disable glossy effects because its really killing me at the moment. Or else use interpolation on glossies. You almost need a seperate set of materials for animations than used in stills it seems...

[jujubee]

Interpolation glossies and LC stored in IR maps do not work well. 25 subs is too much. I think about 12 max is all thats really necessary for most renders. Anyone elses thoughts on this?

[paulison]

thanks, yeah I agree. For stills you notice the difference, but not anims. dropped my metals down to 12 from 25

there needs to be a magical button that goes through and optimises everything (vray and material settings) according to what you need to do :P

[jujubee]

You can save out presets - doesn't cover everything but you can get most of the important values in.

[DaForce]

You mean the "Make Realistic Render" Button ??

I think thats planned for Vray 3

[paulison]

thats the one!. when can we preorder?

So how long till vray3 comes out !? all of this waiting for the impossible is extremely bothersome. someone please hurry up and make it so we can make more money with less effort

BTW i heard it will have an instant animation button and all you need is an amiga 500 and 2 floppy disks.

[DaForce]

actually i heard it was a commodore 64 and a tape drive...