Slow render +15 hours...

[Ras]

Hi guys

 

I´m looking for some help evaluating the attached scene...

 

Hardware Specs:

 

Dell OPTIPLEX GX260

Intel P4 2.4 GHz

523.256 KB Ram

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200

 

I know the hardware isn´t exactly made for this kind of task but the render is rediculously slow +70 hours.

 

The render itself is set to 2000x1111 pixels...

 

so for this scene I´ve set the sampling quality too low because the edges are not drawn very smoothly. For a render with min/max set to 16 the rendertime is around 70 hours...

 

What I´d like to know is if we´re doing something completely wrong because this is taking forever... The scene has been rendering for 5 hours and is only 39% finished.

 

It is a student scene that I´m trying to optimize but I´m not really getting anywhere with it. When rendering sizes under 700 pixels in width everything is acceptable so I´m guessing that it a hardware problem but I´d really like to hear your suggestions...

 

Al

 

Thanks

[chuck]

Ras-

 

Well, I tried out your scene and couldnt get good results. I pulled your mesh into one of my outdoor scenes with mental ray, but still didnt like the results. I only know enough about mental ray to be dangerous...

 

If you are looking for speed and ease of use, do yourself a favor and download vray free.

 

http://www.vrayrender.com/download/

 

Its easy to set up, and its a fast renderer. The pic below took one 1.5 minutes to render at a medium GI setting, with area shadows on the spotlight. This was on a dual 3.4 xeon with 2gb ram...but your machine will do fine too, maybe half as fast. With vray free, there are only 5 or so settings you need to worry about- and the quality setting for GI has presets, low, med, high, etc. This pic rendered in under 30sec at the low setting.

 

I know mental ray can do a great job with renderings, but I personally don't want to spend the time learning all the numbers...

 

hope this helped,

 

Chuck

[Juan Altieri]

i made the render (with all the setting you choose) at 500 pixels width and takes me 20 minutes, so the quality is not so good, but 70 hours....?

so my machine is a p4 2.8ghz, with 2gb of ram..

[abicalho]

It's not a hardware problem. It's just that Final Gather is proportional to the image size you're rendering, so the larger the scene, the longer it will take to render.

 

Also, why do you have 15x15 bounces in GI? That's way too much, IMHO.

 

Remove FG and you'll have normal render times. I increased your photons here to 300K and got a nice result without FG.

[Ras]

Thanks guys

 

I need to use MR because I teach a class at the Schooll of architecture in Copenhagen...

 

15/15 bounces is because the glass looks wierd (grainy) if these numbers are too low. This is not my scene so I don´t know whats been done to it in every detail but I haven´t been able to locate the error myself.

 

So I guess we should try with more photons instead of FG? Sounds like a good idea. I prefer not using FG myself but sometimes it seems vary hard to get rid of the splotches without using it. Could you post the scene as you edited it Abicalho?!? I´d really like to test the rendertimes with the machines at the Academy.

 

Thanks again.

[abicalho]

I'm sorry, I didn't save the file. I just played with it in the office last Friday.