I am doing a project for a book publisher and did a trial time yesterday only to find out that Vue's render speed is totally unacceptable. I started the rendering at 9:30 p.m. on 8-10-2005 and it was only 15% done the next day at 7:00 a.m. Granted it is a very large rendering, a full spread of 17.0" X 11" at 300 dpi. The preset used was "Superior". Remember this is going in a Text book and must look top notch. My question is how can I speed this time up and not loose quality? Being only 15% done Vue estimated another 60 HOURS to finish it. That's way to long! I am running it on a dual 2.7 gig G5 with 2.5 gigs of ram. I need help fast. If you can just give me the settings to speed this up that would be great. I don't have the time to e-mail back and fourth. I do have access to another G5 machine with the same spec's, would the render cow help or can that only be used for animation?Thanks........

there are a HEAP of things to tweak and improve render times it's no so simple. -DOn't use global Radiosity,global illumination should do -volumetric lights/volumetric sunlight slow things down a ton, use carefully. Can give awesome effects though. -multiple lights slow it all down. -Have the current update installed (277255 iirc) -render to disk, for me, is faster -yes renders that big will takes AGES, sorry but that's life, for such renders you really do need to have a 2nd PC if you use your main for other things too. 17x11 inch 300 DPI that's big...5110x3300 pixels in size. I have only just got Lightwave, I dunno about the higher end renders but that's a HUGE render and I bet even they woudln't throw that out fast. -SUperior drastically slows down render times, ick. -Vue's reported render times are usually way off anyway hehe. -reflections cause slow down especially if reflected/trhough a transaprency (ie say a glass lantern shade with light inside, reflected in a mirror) -Shadow maps can way cut down render times, but the shadows aren't so precise.

Render times depend on a multitude of factors in your image. There is unfortunately no magical parameter to do the trick. It all depends on your picture. The short answer is : render using 'user' mode and disable any effect you are not using. Anything blurred (blurred shadows, depth of field, etc) will add to your render time. If you are on a short deadline, effects like depth of field can be much better recreated with photoshop using the Z-depth map created by Vue (don't forget to save that map when you are done rendering). Pay attention to the 'bump' values of materials, especially when they are distant. If you don't need to see the bumps, just disable them. Disable any reflection or refraction in materials such as metals or glass if they are distant. Use reflection maps instead of raytraced reflections if possible. Avoid volumetric materials and metablobs if they are not necessary. They can be slow. If you have Vue Infinite, and you are using objects made of multiple parts (boolean primitives for example), use Bake to Polygons to simplify them. Break up your scene in several layers to help the renderer figure out better 'what is where'. Leave your machine alone during render. Kill any application that can be using memory - browsers, email, etc... And if all this doesn't help, add more machines to your render and use rendercows. Again, if you need to render a still image with cows, you will need to get Vue Infinite.

If you can post a small render of your image in 'final' quality, maybe we could advise you on the best strategy. I also forgot another big time sink : Global Illumination and Radiosity. Avoid at all cost if you do not have the time to tinker with it to get the best results quickly.

Tony, just to elaborate on one thing mentioned earlier briefly, Vue's time remaining estimate is based on the assumption that the entire rest of the scene is as complicated as the line it's working on at that moment, and as a result is horribly inaccurate, my guess is that once it hit the water it really slowed down (do to transparency, bump and reflection calculation) and your estimate skyrocketed. But once the renderer actually passes the water it should speed up quite a bit and when it hits the sky it will just fly through that part completely.

Another thing, as was mentioned before, if you are using Global Illumination or Global Ambiance, go ahead and reduce the quality to -1.0 or even -1.5, especially for these large outdoor scenes you won't even notice the impact.

Beyond that there's not much else I can tell from your scene that you coud reduce, ecoystems do take some added time to render (not nearly as much as if you actually had all those trees manually placed in there) and it looks like you're using procedural terrains as well which also add a little bit of time.

Definately render in superior (or user equivelent settings) at minimum though for published work, broadcast does not do sufficient work on anti-aliasing and render quality.

Hope this helps some! Oh, one more thing, try disabling soft shadows if they're on, that is a big render hog and it doesn't look like this scene will look much different without them.

Message edited on: 08/11/2005 11:47

In that scene there really isn't much you can change as it is pretty simple. That being said, it is your rendering settings that are slowing you down. Here is what I would do, but it will take some testing. 1) Use the select a render area feature. Pick an object that is detailed and will be noticed. Select perhaps the boat or one of the trees up close. But make sure you keep your same render size that way you will know exactly how it will look in the finished scene. 2) Select the superior setting then select user settings. 3) As others mentioned above, certain items will add to render time. Changing some setting lower will have virtually no impact on the quality of your scene. Ok, it will effect it but it may be so minor that it is acceptable. There are many quality sliders (like AA) than can be trimmed down for massive speed increases with minimal quality loss. That is about it. By using a selected render area you can do small test renders but still see exactly the quality you will be getting. Once you find the quality / speed ratio you are happy with then do the full render. You will be surprised at how many things you can lower that will have no real noticable difference. :)

User settings can save render times, because you can tweak the rendering computation: If you're not using any DOF or motion blur effect, go for user settings. If you have soft shadows enabled, go for 4% max, and reduce the shadows to 80%. Youi can change the raytracing of reflections too, 3 should be enough, instead of the standard 5. Use global ambiance instead of GI, not as accurate, but could be enough. As stated before, reduce the quality of the lighting to -1. As for AA, you need some good quality here, since you have an ecosystem, and you don't want all of your trees to look like a single pixellated object. A regular AA set to min 9, and max 12, set to 70% should do. Uncheck texture AA, I've never seen any difference when using standard Vue materials and, and it's pointless for procedurals. If you use low res texture maps, you may want to check this option though. Hope this helped.

Yep... I just looked at the scene. I would start by disabling transparency and refraction for the water material. At this distance, it doesn't matter if the water is transparent or not. I would also break up the terrain into two pieces. One in the foreground, with bump enabled for the treee bark and the rocks. One in the background, with bump set to 0 for the tree back and the rocks. That should give you a good boost in performance.

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1. I would knock off the transparency totally of the water in that image if a deadline was tight. It would speed it up quite a bit because it would get rid of refraction calculations etc. You may have to adjust the colour of the water a little to match what you already have, but it should work. 2. How about putting those distant trees on an alpha plane....now that would speed things up. 3. Whats the resolution of the terrains? Could you knock that done? Hope that helps. Cheers