Average Interior Rendering Time

[glorybound]

I am seeing a trend of people admitting to longer render times, nowadays. Awhile back people were saying anything more than 45 minutes for a 4k still is ridiculous, however, I am now hearing 3-4 hours is pretty normal, which is what I am seeing. I know, a ton of factors, but is 3-4 hours on a normal workstation pretty normal? For my interiors to get clean enough, without loss of detail, it is taking 3+ hours.

[piotrus3333]

there is no one size fits all I guess. If rendertimes are affecting your flow, cut them in half. (neat image and photozoom, one more node) If not than just let it be. for years I struggled with one machine and rendering overnight. now with small farm I usually do not even bother to render regions. let machines/software do the dirty work. it will pay off.

edit: I like around 1h/4k still for finals.

[hoppergrass]

For me the two biggest factors in the increase of render times

1) Brute Force as the default
2) Progressive Rendering

Whilst Brute Force gives nice detail and is supposed to be bullet proof with minimal setup time, render times are still too long to be practical for my workflow. Same goes with Progressive, its great for setting up materials, lighting and quick previews, but when it comes to final high res renders the time to clean up is the killer.

For us anything over a 20 minute render time is too long. Granted we are doing mostly design viz so fast iteration is more important than super fine, subtle detail that marketing viz obsess over.

[glorybound]

I would love to see a 20 minutes render time setup. I mean, a complete interior.

[hoppergrass]

This was a small project I ended last year of with. Not the most complex scene but the render times were around 20 minutes (granted using DR over machines). Yes there is a lot of room for improvement and further tweaking, it did the job and the client was happy

[glorybound]

Well, DR over how many machines?

[hoppergrass]

sorry my bad editing, 1 host and 2 slaves.

[glorybound]

Three machines, so an hour on one? I suppose your not using BF+LC.

[hoppergrass]

probably closer to 40 minutes, with BF+IC it was around to 2 hours (if memory serves me correctly)

[glorybound]

I haven't played with VRay settings for years.

[hoppergrass]

These are pretty much my default setting these days, quite robust and seem to cover most scenes. I too haven't needed to fartarse with setting either.

[Richard7666]

A lot of it will depend on the complexity of your materials. I suspect certain maps and such like those used by V-ray materials from the SigerShaders collections can render slower, too.
Things like vegetation being visible out a window, and also your lighting. HDRI's will generally take longer to render than Sun&Sky, and certainly longer than simple plane lights in the windows.

I've had interior scenes take 5 hours on my Threadripper 1950X.
Albeit, that's using progressive.

[glorybound]

It seems like my 2-3 hour render times are pretty typical, but I can probably do better with a little work.

[cheerioboy]

1 host, 8 slave machines with DR. I think they're all dual xeons used by designers in the office. Always BF+LC, bucket mode. Interior renderings mostly - time can range from 30 min to 2 hours per view. I'll let them go higher on the weekends if settings are being cranked up or using volumetric fog, etc. Usually keep the settings default and only play with Noise Threshold. It has been so long since I fiddled with settings. Resolution around 2.5 - 3.5k

At home I've got 1 host, 5 slave machines for DR. But they're i7 CPUs - probably higher clock speeds than the xeons but will take longer to render. But usually look for similar render times. I find mesh lights and vray light materials being used for lighting will give me the biggest headaches. Try to stick to all light being VRayLight planes & discs + vraysun. Never messed with HDRI's for scenes - only for rendering single objects like furniture/objects.

[glorybound]

Never messed with HDRI's for scenes - only for rendering single objects like furniture/objects.

That is probably my biggest issue, but images look so much better with a nice HDRI, both interior and exterior.