Looking for some help reducing the render times on a scene so I can get a better Orb Pic in the gallery:

The sun is off, atmosphere is off too, and I have just 3 lights in here.  Obviously it's the Orb's texture (complex as hell) that's doing it - but is there any way to reduce the render times in the render options - see pic?

There are 108 spheres or varying types but only 15 metaballs - that's not a lot is it?

Here are the settings for the 3 lights: beginning with radial1:

And radial2:

And Radial Light 3:

Here are the light's locations, as you can see one is up in the ceiling, one is directly over the Orb and one is inside the orb.

Oh and the red bit in this pic shows the actual orb - it is a bit complex in there so I thought I'd better make it clear which sphere is the orb.

Soft shadows is what is doing it . I no longer use them. I find it is easier and quicker to use mor elights in tightly grouped arrays than it is to use soft shadows.  I use light domes and light groups to get soft shadows.Soft shadows in Bryce are amazingly slow. I fidn that 3 soft shadow lights are slower than 100 hard shadow no falloff lights. Remember too no falloff.
    Sort of as an experement I rendered a pic with 60 lights and another with 3 soft lights the 60 is substantially faster. People don't play with light domes because they are slower but because they simulate soft shadows and true ambeince faster than setting up a render for those things. My 3 sot light s is still at it at least twice as long as the 57 light rig. I have preset ligting rigs for this I made my own after I took a few of the ones available and disected them.

you could try turning down the value of the maximum ray depth. the only thing it really affects much is reflections and such. Glass objects might become less bright due to less reflections with lower ray depth settings, but that can in some cases be compensated with some diffusion and ambiant settings.

Also you might be able to do some about that orbs texture with the quality settings of volumetrics.

> Quote - Soft shadows is what is doing it . I no longer use them. I find it is easier and quicker to use mor elights in tightly grouped arrays than it is to use soft shadows.  I use light domes and light groups to get soft shadows.Soft shadows in Bryce are amazingly slow. I fidn that 3 soft shadow lights are slower than 100 hard shadow no falloff lights. Remember too no falloff. >     Sort of as an experement I rendered a pic with 60 lights and another with 3 soft lights the 60 is substantially faster. People don't play with light domes because they are slower but because they simulate soft shadows and true ambeince faster than setting up a render for those things. My 3 sot light s is still at it at least twice as long as the 57 light rig. I have preset ligting rigs for this I made my own after I took a few of the ones available and disected them.

Okay... I've turned the soft shadows off on all the 3 lights, and instead of something like 7 days 21 hours etc etc it took 1 hour 31 minutes... I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not.

In a situation like this (i.e. inside the building) I have no idea how to place a light dome or where to put more than the 3 lights I already have, and won't more lights bleach out the scene?

Here's the image now, what do you think?

Quote - you could try turning down the value of the maximum ray depth. the only thing it really affects much is reflections and such. Glass objects might become less bright due to less reflections with lower ray depth settings, but that can in some cases be compensated with some diffusion and ambiant settings.

Also you might be able to do some about that orbs texture with the quality settings of volumetrics.

Well the orb 2 spheres: one is Clays Volumetric fire with slight adjustments and the other is a water - Deep Blue.  I'm not so sure that I really want to change the way it looks, as that's what I really like about it.  But I'm willing to try things, but I wouldn't be keepping any changes that make it look worse.

What sort of changes might improve the render times, yet improve the image do you think?

hmmm... it's tricky... maybe there's some oversized bitmap textures some places?

Maybe try turning off all shadow receiving, shadow casting and self shadowing off on ur orb textures and the volume texture? then apply a procedural map to the light inside the orb if neccesary to display some light patterns that look like they come from the orb. If the orb is supposed to light the scene there's no need for it to go and be receiving all kindsa shadows anyways.

Okay, turned off shadow casting and receiving and self shadows on the orb. The pic below the top one is the result - but is it better than the one above it or not?

I'm not really sure, I'm not sure that the suddenly redder floor is so much better - I think I prefered the bluer floor.  And both the top one and the bottom one of these two pics took almost the exact same time - one and a half hours.

Where do I go from here?

I can live with one and a half hours but is it getting better or not?

Oh and although the orb sheds light, there is the light that the warehouse/engineroom/storeroom whatever this place is, had before the orb got there.  So the orb is not the only source of light in here.

So, improvements?  Yes?  No? Maybe?

Another thing you can do is to lower the quality on the volumetric fire that will make it render faster. I think 1.5 hours is livable. I generally don't tweak things any more once I get my time below two hours so I think you are ok.

I think so. The light directly above the orb is casting an odd shadow though. Any shadows of the orb should be cast by the room lights and that little one on top of the orb doesn't feel right for those.
Usually warehouses have fairly strong hard shadow lights arranged in a grid pattern up by the ceiling. Your room doesn't seem to have such light/shadows combo's.

Well, for one thing you see a large difference in scene brightness, which suggests there is a LOT of shadowing going on from that complex orb when u put shadows on. To compensate for the color changes and the brightness changes in your scene you can also adjust the color and ambient color of your light inside the orb as well as the amount of light it casts.

Quote - I think so. The light directly above the orb is casting an odd shadow though. Any shadows of the orb should be cast by the room lights and that little one on top of the orb doesn't feel right for those.
Usually warehouses have fairly strong hard shadow lights arranged in a grid pattern up by the ceiling. Your room doesn't seem to have such light/shadows combo's.

A grid pattern.  What sort of pattern?  Does it matter?

I'll try some out.  Thanks.

Quote - Another thing you can do is to lower the quality on the volumetric fire that will make it render faster. I think 1.5 hours is livable. I generally don't tweak things any more once I get my time below two hours so I think you are ok.

I don't think I wanna decrease in any way the volumetric fire on the orb, that's the once main thing in the scene that makes it sing for me, so I don't want to lose that.  And like you, I can live with 1&a half hours.

Well, I've now put in more little lights in the ceiling - they are arranged in a cross shape, with alternating blue and white lights (I found that just white bleached out too much of the blue tones I like, and too much blue was just too overpowering)  So there's blues set to 3 and the whites set to 1 - all with ranged fall off.

And the strongest light is the blue one in the orb set to... set to... um 30 or 50 I think, I can't check - the darned thing is rendering and although it was quite fast to begin with it's slowed down a great deal on Antialiasing the Orb's support...

It took ages reducing all those lights down to where the scene wasn't bleached out, at one point I even tried playing with a big negative light outside, as all the ground out through the arch went weird. but all's well now. 

The scene is a little darker than I'd planned originally but that does show up the electric haze around the orb very nicely.

I'll post it as soon as it's finished, provided the galleries are working at the time.

Thanks to all for your help, and I hope you like the result...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1243597

Posted in galleries now: See link.