reducing model size

[illyrianeye]

I have a big problem. I am starting to do an animation walk through of a high rise residential development. I am responsible for doing the walkthrough and the surrounding site. The architect, has given me a 3d max model of the building, rendered and ready to go. One problem, it takes 45 min to 1 hour for a render, so I cant even imagine how long the animation will take.

 

Any ways to reduce a model size? group it, convert it into something else?

 

thanks for any info,

[Arnold Sher]

couple of things that might come in handy:

 

-optimize the model (in the modifiers menu), this reduces the amount of polygons

-try to export as a 3ds and bring it back in. For whatever reason that seems to do the trick and renders faster

-relook at your lighting, that is usually the main reason

-check under raytracing that the amount of times that the lighting is bounced is set to no more that 2 (by default is set to 9)

-if you are using plugin like vray, you can save the lighting solution in the inrcements of 10 and therefore drop your rendering time

-if you have materials such as glass or steel with raytrace setup that could also be a factor. You might consider using "falloff" as a reflection instead and see how that effects your rendering times

 

There are tons of reasons why it renders slow but suggestion to go through the steps above and i have no doubt that you can drop those times rather substantially..

 

I hope that helps... Good luck...

[Bugga_Guy]

There is a modifier called multi-res. If you use it allows you reduce the polygon count however, the more you reduce the more distorted it looks. Also it doesn't work very good in all cases - it works really well in organic shapes, but you might want to give it a try.

 

However, you may want to consiter making version of your model. eg if you animation is only the exterior front part of the building, remove the guts of the building and the back for one animation. Just do some storyboarding/pre planning what you want to animate, then incorporate model versions in which you are trying to animate.

[Telemachus]

I have a big problem. I am starting to do an animation walk through of a high rise residential development. I am responsible for doing the walkthrough and the surrounding site. The architect, has given me a 3d max model of the building, rendered and ready to go. One problem, it takes 45 min to 1 hour for a render, so I cant even imagine how long the animation will take.

 

Any ways to reduce a model size? group it, convert it into something else?

 

thanks for any info,

 

You're one step away. If you simply want to keep all of your elements and make your model smaller:

 

1) select all objects

 

2) select the "Select and Uniform Scale" tool on the toolbar (next to "Select and Rotate")

 

3) if need be, right-click the "Select and Uniform Scale" tool button and make adjustment in one of the X fields; it will uniformly affect the Y and Z coordinates, as well

 

T