Render times for HD

[Buggsy]

I was just wondering what might be considered a reasonable rendering time per frame for HD (1280x720)? I know there are benchmark tests on particular modelled scenes but what is a realistic production time per frame?

I am creating a demo reel in HD and don't really want it to take forever. I certainly don't want to have to re-render it all in order to achieve a better end result either. I am doing a scene at the moment that after re-addressing my lighting setup and pushing settings all over the shop to get better results that it went from 9 hours per frame down to only taking 2.0 hours per frame and the resulting image is so much better. I have 19 seconds in this one scene alone and the saving in rendering time is 16.6 days!

It depends on a lot of variables I know but how do you know what is realistic? I would appreciate hearing what sort of rendering times are being experienced on Intel Core Macs for HD resolution.

Some details on my project:

Interior scene

441,000 Polygons,

1 Radial Light (Sun),

2 Area Lights (Ambient light),

Blurred Reflections

No transparency,

GI sampling engine used on Radial Light shadow,

1280x720 resolution

Anti-Alias Level 4x4 & Sampling Level 2x2,

500 photons per light source,

GI Ray Count for Radial & Area Lights.

Thanks for looking.

Michael

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Michael,

Taking 2.0 hours?? per frame?

I would like to look this scene...

a simple Tip.. “Anti-Alias Level 4x4 & Sampling Level 2x2,”

Anti-Alias always multiplied by 2, so, you will have 4x4 and 1x1 or 8x8 and 2x2 and all groups in the group info window need to be sampled 1x1 or 2x2 to match the render settings :)

4x4 and 2x2 = means render slow down without any improved quality.

Thanks

Tom

[Buggsy]

Hi Tomas,

I guess you believe 2.0 hours is too long? What is a reasonable rendering time?

I have animated a lot of things in the past and have never been happy with the quality of the finished rendering. I am trying to put together a demo reel of all these animations but after seeing a lot of the animations on CG Society I know it needs to be a higher standard than what it is at the moment. I have wanted to offer animation as part of my architectural business for years but I haven't been able get my head around achieving a reasonable production time.

I have found that during my short EI life that you set limits on what is an acceptable time to wait for your finished rendering and in the case of stills if 8 hours of sleep at night gets the job done then that's acceptable. This is not to say that this is an effective means of setting limits and I am now having to challenge what is a reasonable and acceptable time in order to get the work done at the quality I want and as quickly as possible.

In practise Anti-Alias Level 4x4 & 2x2 takes less time than 8x8 & 2x2 and produces a better result than just 4x4 & 1x1 so I don't understand the comment that they need to be paired together. If they needed to be paired together why aren't they locked together in the interface?

Everyones comments and help would be greatly appreciated regarding the way they go about their production times etc.

Michael

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Michael,

All my films are done in a few minutes per frame... :)

So, if you have a scene which I could take a look I would be happy to help.!

About AA, I learned this with a VFX Artists J. Banta which created all AG Shaders which Northernlights3D is selling them, I use several times 8x8 & 2x2 in special cases.

Thanks

Tom

[rvlna]

If you have multicore mac, use renderama to use 2 or more processors ... 2Gb Ram per processor is fine, so if you have 6Gb, use 3 processors ... etc... (But don't use renderama with clows and depth of field layer shader)