Forum: Vue


Subject: Global Illumination is a time killer !

Holli opened this issue on Jan 03, 2005 ยท 12 posts


MartinPh posted Mon, 03 January 2005 at 4:51 AM

Hi Holli, I had a try with global radiosity using a model I'm working on - to see the effect, but also to test render times. I used a simple standard atmosphere, no volumetrics etc., and rendered in Final at 1024x768. I was very pleased with the result: GR eliminates that faded flatness you would often get with shadowed area's in Vue 4. The building now looks more solid and has far more nuance in dark area`s. But render time was pretty long: at 6h 43m GR took 129 times longer than a non GR render, which completed in 5 minutes. I expect that a definitive GR render including more objects, additional lights, volumetric atmosphere and a higher quality output setting will take at least 24 hours to finish, if not much longer. On the other hand, I'm not sure if the complexity of the scenes/objects makes much difference. My very first GR try after getting V5 was with a standard atmosphere and just a few plain cubes, and yet the estimated render time was also about 7 hours (I didn't finish that one). It depends on your PC configuration as well, of course. Mine is a P4 1.6 Ghz, with 1gb ram, 260 gb harddisk, and a nvidia fx5950 ultra 256mb video card. Pretty average, I guess, but well beyond the minimum requirements and even the recommended configuration mentioned on the e-on product site. Though it is great e-on implemented radiosity in Vue 5, in the end I think it is an option for pro's, not really suited for use on your average home computer. It is a bit frustrating that Vue 5 offers so many options to get really high quality renders, but if you apply them all (and of course that is what we all want) you'll have to wait a week to see the result. Not very practical any way if you have only one PC... Maybe we`ll get a more efficient implementation of these options in future versions?? I'm also interested to hear experiences and advice from others.