Your settings are the same as the ones I use 99% of the time. The size of the image seems about right. There are 24 bits per pixel (3 bytes) in an uncompressed image so it should be at least 3426 Kb. How many lights do you have in the scene? The number of lights increases the render time dramatically. - Yolanda

In the OPTIMIZATIONS section, change your settings to: Clustered scenes and aggressive. I use 48bit dithering also.

Does your piece need to be so big. 800x600 is usually ok for 90% of the stuff you see around here. I use 990x743 of late because it fills the Bryce workspace on my 19" monitor.

Good housekeeping can also help speed things up as does stopping applications running in the background. Try leaving your stuff to render overnight.

Message edited on: 12/01/2005 14:43

lights + volume mats = long renders, always soft shadow = long renders I've learned to build scene mostly with AA turned off unless checking materials and textures, then I use plop render. The final piece I usually go bigger than your stated size and go to bed. Sometimes I've gone to bed twice during one render. Side note. I have discovered many mats actually look better not anti-aliased from this approach.

Take a look at your lights. Shadow castign lights always take longer. So I often will have a fill light not cast shadows saves a lot of time. Main lights always cast shadows with me. Bump maps take longer too it you reduce them below 10 then they render a bit quicker. Do you have clear objects what is the refraction index does it need one? These are things that woudl have minumum impact on your scenes' look.

Make sure soft shadows are not enabled in the sky lab. If you want soft shadows, change render settings to premium and rpp to 32, and re-enable soft shadows in the skylab and or on any lights you may be using. The filesize is correct. Is 3 MB really that large? The photos I usually work on for school range from 130-300MB each. When you are done you can save a version as a jpeg that will be about 120K, so don't fret if you're worried about uploading to the web.

I often find rendering at Premium with 16 rpp gives the same result as your settings but @ half the render time. Go figure

@ skiwillgee: I usually go to bed 8 to 16 times during the course of a render.

In my experience, use the Agressive and the For Clustered scenes options, I just did a 38 hour animation render for a film comp, the diff is, for clustered scenes, it will anti-alias small deatils like railings etc etc..as far as shadows, in this version of Bryce, I would just add a few more lights without soft shadows set...just set an object and use the basic 3 light system on it to get your shadows, even in real life lol:-) hang in there, you'll tweak it out I'm sure of it!

Message edited on: 12/02/2005 03:46

@ UVDan At my age, if I had a render (not one on the crapper) that took 8-16 bed times, I would forget what I was doing or worse yet, I'd expire. PS I'm not really that old

Forum requires 512KB - that's why I need to reduce it. There are (unfortunately) 14 lights in this. I guess I could reduce the pixel size a bit but... I was hoping not to. It's been weeks rendering, somethimes while I'm doing something else, sometimes while I'm watching TV or when I go out (did that twice for the whole day) and sometimes I got fed up and stopped it (saved it of course I don't want to have to start all over again if I can help it,) but it's still not finished. I'm sure I've counted at least 10 passes so far and that's just while I was in the room. Trouble is I can't tell how much further it's got to go... Am I nearly there or is it just beginning? (oh, and soft shadows are NOT enabled and all the radial lights have 0 soft shadows) I'm trying the clustering and agressive as advised and now it's reporting 8:08:33 - I am right in thinking this means 8 hours, 8 mins and 33 secs? Or am I? How accurate a prediction is that?

Yup 8 hours.....some of them can take DAYS!

As a prediction, the first one is usually crap. The second or third pass is usually much more accurate. And yes, 14 lights with shadows on would make a render long. BTW, DO NOT save as JPEG from Bryce. Its JPG algorythm is always crap. Save the BMP and then convert in a 2D program. Apropos the passes, I've got something that's been rendering off and on since the beginning of Novemeber. 3700x2700, DOF with 64rpp. But I also counted at least eight passes and it's still rendering. Usually, Bryce makes only four passes. Possibly it's a bug, because I leave it to render when I go to work, stop and save when I get back, and then resume the render either the following day or a couple of days later. I don't see any visible difference during the last couple of passes.

Ah, Erlik. Yes I did wonder, since I'm pretty sure that the biggy SAID it was going to take 6 hours something.... obviously a great big porky! Since I'm sure its had well more than 3 times that just in straight runs never mind the odd few hours here and there. I think I may keep on with that biggy, just to find out how long it will actually take in the end. Oh, and don't worry, my Bryce is set to bmp. (I haven't seen any difference in the last 6 passes)

try puting ray depth to 2 .

ysvry, Will that make the render time longer or shorter? Will it improve the quality or lessen it?

Should make it shorter, at least a bit. But it might also lower the quality. OTOH, it might not be noticeable. BTW, Fran, really try with Premium set to 4 rays per pixel. Normal+Antialiasing takes quite longer than the Premium.

Oh, really? I'll give it a try, thanks. Er, hang on. With all the other suggestions? or part of them? I'm starting to get a bit lost with what everyone's saying here.

When the render times are too long... 1) Look for objects which can have the anti-aliasing turned off. Select said object, click in the 'A' box, hold down Shift & Control keys and then click on the checkmark. The fewer objects to be anti-aliased, the less time for the render. 2) In the render options, use Superfine or Premium and reduce the 'rays per pixel' count to 9 (if color accuracy is not critical) and the 'maximum ray depth' to 3 (if you do not have a lot of reflections in the scene as this setting affects reflections) 3) Stuff listed above 8-)