What render times should I be aiming to achieve for an interior animation?

[tomlowe]

Hi just looking for some advice and insight. What render times (per single frame at 1280 x 720) should I be aiming to achieve for an interior animation using 3ds Max Vray?

[Corey Beaulieu]

The minimum amount of time to get the least amount of noise should be the only accurate answer.

 

I typically look for a 15-45 minutes per frame time depending on the complexity of the scene, more 15's than 45's but every scene is different.

[tomlowe]

Okay thanks a lot. At the moment I'm in the 90+ minute range which is obviously know where near where I need to be. Ill have to keep tweaking the settings, I usually do exterior animations so this is a new challenge for me regarding efficient interior rendering set ups.

[RyderSK]

That's a lot, although obviously it depends on complexity and what is your benchmark CPU.

 

I aim for

I can..make it sub 10 minutes also. But that require "fakes" that sacrifice visual quality (not "technical quality", not talking about GI/AA sampling); like interpolated lights, reduced specularity relationships in scene (shorter cuttofs, reflection/refraction bouncing,etc...), ambient occlusion,etc... something I am not very comfortable doing unless absolutely must.

[tomlowe]

The scene isn't intensely complex, its an apartment interior but obviously it shouldn't be rendering out at the duration im getting.

 

Im working off of an i7-3770 4-core and that's at 1280px so I'm definitely way off!

Thanks for the help though, Now I know what I should realistically be aiming for.

[Piash]

It's gonna take a week to render interior animation if it takes 45 mins per frame... that is way to high. Specially if you don't have good cpu...

[Corey Beaulieu]

It's gonna take a week to render interior animation if it takes 45 mins per frame... that is way to high. Specially if you don't have good cpu...

 

The later part of your statement is true, but if you are rendering an animation without some power on your side, you are likely in over your head. If you cannot render a quality worth selling, you have no business selling an animation. 10 minute frames are not likely good frames for final animations (though if they are that is ideal) and to be scared of waiting the time it takes within reason (which 45 minutes a frame is well within) is foolish.

 

Everyone is so obsessed with guys like Bertrand Benoit and Peter Guthrie (they are great, don't get me wrong), but if you think for a second they are more concerned with sub-15 minute frames over high-end frames, you are gravely mistaken.

 

Quality is a balance of power and talent. Don't be fooled by "magic" answers or tall tales of faster frames.

[Noahman]

Hey dude.

 

For me 20 minutes is the max render time I would allow. For the majority of all my exterior and interior animations for 720p, I aim for 10 minutes per frame as an average. The technique I use to do this is very simple. One way to lower render times lies in these 2 simple things:

 

- GI Type

- Reflection/refraction subdivisions and maps

 

For all my animations I use light cache as the primary. No secondary. All metal or glossy shaders need to be as basic as possible.

 

Here is a great tut that sort of outlines the technique I use: http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/8020/flickering-free-flythrough-animation-in-vray

 

90 minute plus render times is crazy. That's what the times the guys doing Transformers and Iron man are getting at 4k!

 

Hope that helps.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Noahman
Oops..

[RyderSK]

 

 

90 minute plus render times is crazy. That's what the times the guys doing Transformers and Iron man are getting at 4k!

 

 

The Hollywood blockbusters often have more than a day (or few) per frame ! When they say Arnold is fast, they don't mean 10 minutes (Archvizers with single i7's wet dream), but the fact it doesn't take 2 weeks to do = )

 

Disney's frozen took 132 hours per frame for most complicated scene (the frozen palace). And that wasn't 4K and neither path-traced Arnold renderer.

 

 

There's often preconception (super popular on Chaos forum...) that if your frames aren't sub

Edited October 31, 2014 by RyderSK

[Scott Schroeder]

A great breakdown of render times for recent films. Granted, it deals with hair rendering but you can get the idea of how Hollywood views render times. For scenes with the Wargs in the first Hobbit flick, their render time was 960 hours for 1 second of 48fps animation. So that's about 20 hours per frame.

 

http://jokermartini.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/HairFurRenderingCGSpecialEffects.jpg

 

Granted, we all don't have a Hollywood size render farm so those times are unreachable. However, with Amazon EC2, you can have a pretty large render farm ready to go in a short amount of time and it's completely scalable. Scale it up when you need it. When you are idle, drop it down to a single image on the cheapest box they have just to keep your install image. To me, the EC2 is that good level of render farm where you have a lot of work currently, but you aren't sure if dropping the cash for a full and all powerfull in house farm is still worth it. Craigslist is littered with render boxes that companies are selling after expanding way too quickly.

 

For me, when I had to animations with limited CPU strength, I just give still images the ole Ken Burns moving still treatment with some 90-180 frames of actual animation sprinkled in there. That way I can deliver a high quality animation without having to wait weeks for it to finish.

[notamondayfan]

I'm just compositing my latest interior animation (it's been a while since I've done a high-quality interior on a deadline), but I really recommend reading up on optimisation. Grant Warwick is a good place to start, but there are plenty of other sites with the same principles.

 

I took my 1 hour render time down to 9 mins (1280*720, i7 4770), with a very acceptable noise level, which I then remove in post anyway. I spent a whole day optimising the scenes, time very well spent. At 1 hour I was considering culling detail, glossy reflections, etc, but after optimisation I have an animation with full detail and juicy materials too.

 

Dean

[TomasEsperanza]

Hi Tom Lowe Good to see you on here, you still with AIM?

 

An appraoch that I don't think has been mentioned yet is to simply divide the amount of time you have to render by the number of frames, then optimise your settings to deliver the best render you can in that time. Yep and If it looks tight, the a few moving stills can help things along.

 

Sometimes if I'm being opptimising just for the sake of it (as opposed to out of nesesity) I will optimise a scene further even if the render time is acceptable (eg. is a still for overnight render). I use lots of little tricks to optimise, but the V-Ray Material Resampler script is an essential tool in my book.

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/vraymat-resampler

 

Pre-Calculating your GI can be a bit fiddly but worth nailing down a good workflow for that. Like rendering the GI at a smaller screen size, etc. I always forget what I did last time, though! gotta write it down