Need advice dealing with a job

[stayinwonderland]

Here's one of the shots to give you an idea:

 

 

This client is an interior designer and is redoing some space in Manchester to look like a funky, new york style bar.

 

My issue is that at this stage, with my current hardware, I can not make this happen. The above render takes about 3 hours. Any close up render, to test for finished quality, takes about 30 minutes at SUPER low quality for a region render of about 300 pixels square.

 

The deadline is about a week from now. It will take at least that long to order a render slave.

 

I've never hit such a brick wall with rendering before. It just refuses to render anything without enormous delays.

 

I'd also have to learn how to set up a render slave, which I'm guessing could take all day, if you also factor in sticking software into the new machine.

 

Any advice appreciated. It's crunch time, I need to call the client in a couple of hours and discuss what the hell to do.

[Scott Schroeder]

What kind of rig do you have? Post your settings as a super low test render shouldn't take more than a few minutes tops. There is nothing in your scene, save crazy high render/material/light settings that would lead to that long of test render time.

 

Other than that, call your friends up. Beg and borrow extra PC's to build a DR farm. You can also look into using the Amazon EC2 to help render as well. I wouldn't tell the client you can't do it or you've hit a rendering wall.

[stayinwonderland]

My system is: Dell XPS laptop, quad core i7 2760QM, 8gb ram, 64 bit everything, graphics card is pretty awful (Nvidia geforce GT 555m).

 

Here are my settings...

 

 

Here's a wireframe:

 

 

The above settings take about 6 minutes before the actual render begings. ETA for the whole render, 1000px wide is approx 2 hours.

 

A lot of materials are wood which have at least 16 subdivs, at most 24. Lights have vray area attributes and subdivs set to 16 each.

 

-----

 

I can't really use someone else's render node because I need to render constantly to check materials. It's not just about the final render. For that I'll obviously go to a third party render farm, but I need to do constant test renders.

 

I also don't have a single person I know who has a high end machine to borrow.

[copain]

Andy why not use a rendefarm service like foxender or rebusfarm.

Play your cards right and they will probably give you a free go for testing.

Charge it through to your client if you have to.

 

Steve

[copain]

ah just posted at the same time!

for testing don't go above 8 subdivs, there is no need.

the min samples of 16, turn it back to 8 for testing

 

If you really want to though,just test small regions.

[stayinwonderland]

As many will recommend using a render farm, this I will do when it's finished. I need to render constantly through the day to check what materials and lighting will look like. This isn't possible right now as it takes at least an hour to see a good representation of one of those table surfaces. Then factor in every tweak/render/tweak thereafter and we're talking forever.

[numerobis]

i think since your quad has hyperthreading you should set the lightcache passes to 8 instead of 4...

 

and maybe raise the dynamic memory limit to 4000-5000MB of your 8GB if you have enough free RAM... the scene doesn't look so heavy, but who knows

[n3CRO]

Hi Andy,

 

I don't know if it would help but for testing purposes, I would in irradiance map tab choose custom preset and in basic parameters tick 0 (or rly anything as long as values are the same) for both min and max rate so then you have only 1 pass for quick tests.

 

Also would do the same thing in all reflective/refractive materials, use interpolation and min and max rate the same value.

 

Hope it helps,

 

Regards,

Robert

[stayinwonderland]

these are still teacup in a sinking boat solutions. Might save me 5% of render time, but I need something more drastic.

 

(thanks all the same though

[n3CRO]

Check this out if you haven't done this already, but don't go overboard (cuz you can feel tiny lags in max) make screenshot so you can get default settings back if theres no default button http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sGAAYqQGug tick off filter maps in vray tab in materials.

 

Just thinking, maybe with scene states, configure interpolation samples of lights which are near camera to use higher values and farther lights smaller samples ofcourse.

[Ismael]

Using displacement?

You may consider posting the scene for someone to try and find why it is so slow. It should not be with those settings...

I only have Max 2010 and V-Ray 1.5 so I am limited as I cannot for example open a V-Ray 2.xxx file.

 

I would try eliminating all geometry (temporary) and render with just the outside light on. Try with a single plane light as big as the interior, turn off outside light and still without extra geometry. The idea is to try an isolate the lights, materials and or geometry that is making the render crawl.

Also, if nothing, also try replacing the 'room' with just a simple box and see if the render speeds up.

[Scott Schroeder]

If you are testing materials and lights, you don't need AA. Fixed at 1 should be sufficient. I use low Imap and super low light cache, somewhere around 200 and .05 screen size.

 

I agree with everyone else, there has to be something going on for the render times you are getting. Laptops are bad, but it shouldn't be that bad.

[Scott Schroeder]

Are you using vray or standard IES lights? The standard IES lights are slower than grandma trying to run the 100 meter dash.

[stayinwonderland]

If you look at the wireframe I have IES on the walls and regular spots on the tables. I have a scene state were all those lights are off and large plane-lights are overhead and switched on to replace them. That is quicker but only by about 30% which still leaves me at around 1 hour +

 

I spoke to the client and mentioned my predicament. He was very understanding and compromising. I'm going to have to turn down reflections or change from a satin finish to gloss or just not reflective. Bloody embarrassing. How am I supposed to make decent-looking renders!? Tell you what though, I am sick of low-lit interiors. I think from now on I should skip those jobs.

 

And, another point, I saw a youtube video where someone was using Vray Distributed Renders. His standard render was 12 mintues. By adding a whole other computer, it merely cut the render time down to 9 minutes. Not 6 as you'd expect.

 

So I'm reluctant to get a brand new system, install everything, set up a distribution render and go "IS THAT IT?!" But I dunno, you tell me, if I bought an i7 4770K and combined it with my current i7 2760QM, each rendering a frame simultaneously.... I really ought to get breath taking results, right?

[numerobis]

And another point, I saw a youtube video where someone was using Vray Distributed Renders. His standard render was 12 mintues. By adding a whole other computer, it merely cut the render time down to 9 minutes. Not 6 as you'd expect.

As far as i know, when you make a distributed render of a still image, each pc calculates exactly the same lightcache. So DR will not speed up this part of the render process. If there are slower machines they will start later with the next pass. To speed up this process the lightcache can be calculated on the fastest pc and then used one all machines. If i remember correctly Solidrocks has a function to automate this workflow.

 

Regarding your scene i would systematically disable all objects of the scene to see if there are problems in geometry or material settings.

[Ismael]

Tell you what though, I am sick of low-lit interiors. I think from now on I should skip those jobs.

 

1)

http://www.davidfleet.com/tutorials/linear-workflow

 

 

"The advantage of ticking ‘Don’t affect colours (adaption only)’ is that the Gamma 2.2 will not be ‘burnt in’ to the final image, however V-Ray will proceed with all its calculations as though color mapping is applied. In effect this enables VRay to calculate better noise samples as it is sampling a brighter image, so the differences between light and dark tones are easier to detect."

 

2)

I have read that V-Ray has this "VRayLightSelect render element". How about adding more light so it would be simpler to render low lit images and then remove the excess light in post?

[notamondayfan]

Your render-times are bad, no doubt about it. Is there something in the scene slowing things down?

 

Other than that, I'd look at your render settings in detail.

 

Also disable displacement (I'd rather loose this than glossy reflections)

 

Dean

[stayinwonderland]

Ok folks, news flash, I found out what it was!

 

I must share this with everyone so they don't fall prey to the same fate I did. I came close to telling the client that I wasn't capable of finishing this scene and all because...

 

 

These table lights comprised of 3 chamfer cylinders each with the above material applied, except with direct illumination on and also emit light on back side.

 

Turn these on, lowest possible render settings, 1 hour. Turn them off, damn near highest possible render settings, 1 hour. And lowest settings... couple minutes if that

 

I'm not 100% sure but I think the one hour render on low settings was with me also turning off all reflections, deleting the IES lights too. But the one hour on highest settings I didn't even touch the reflection subdivs, which were all either 16 or 24.

 

Now my only issue is that my scene looks like this on highest settings (i.e. noisy as hell):

 

 

because there's not enough light samples getting in. So I have to re-illuminate the scene again. But what I might try is adding omnis and excluding those physical hanging lights from illumination.

 

I'd welcome any thoughts on how I erroneously lit the scene and what better ways there are to do it. Also, is it now obvious why the scene was so slow? or still a mystery as to why that vray light material caused this?

[Justin Hunt]

Direct light can be a PIA if you forget to turn it off. Maybe put three vraylights planes on the outside of the fixture for the direct light and have self-illuminating material NOT produce GI?

 

or set the perforated geometry to be excluded from generating GI.

[Reitveld]

Hi, I know you are trying to solve the render time issue, but does your contract allow you to push the schedule if the client makes changes? I can post the clause I have in my contracts if you wish. (I know this is off topic).

[stayinwonderland]

It may well be of use. Currently he will go days without responding to my "i need feedback before I can proceed" and meanwhile the clock is ticking. And he's making it up as he goes along in terms of changes. Drop of a hat!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

There are a ton of tricks you can do...

 

- Use material overrides, set reflection materials to have no glossies or reflections.

- Pre-Render a pass for your floor and ceiling, and then switch them to a matte material. Then apply the finish floor in Photoshop.

- If possible make items with glossies not visible to reflections.

- Break that large Vray plane light into 4 smaller planes.

- Use as few as possible bitmaps in the reflection slot.

 

 

... the list goes on, but basically don't try to do a beauty render and expect to get everything in one pass.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Crazy Homeless Guy