I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but it seems to me that (for a simple one figure, minimal props/clothing) when I render with Raytraced shadows (2 bounces I think) it goes much quicker than with Depth Mapped shadows. Certainly this probably changes as the scene gets more complex, but I was surprised even at this - I just naturally assumed Ray Trace would always be slower.

Anyone else experience that?

Unzipped edited to add: following tips from others on this board I find render time can be reduced by setting your bucket size to as large a multiple of 2 as possible. I've had it up to 512 at some points, but when I enable Ambient Occlusion I have to cut down to 128 or 64 lest I hit the memory limit. So try a larger bucket size if you can - it seems to speed things up a bit for me at least.

Message edited on: 10/14/2005 16:09