Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1534404

I rendered this image in E6 on a G5 "Quad" PPC 2.5 GB ram. The render took about 8 hours or so, but the anti-alias pass took a WHOPPING 136 HOURS! I mean really! That's a long time to tie up a workstation (over 6 days)! It's not even that great of an image, just a test. It was taking sooo long I decided to ride it out and see how long it actually would take. Anyone have an idea why so long? Is this program for pros only who have render farms at their disposal to get the best quality out of it?

Here are my render settings...

Your settings are way too high.  Take a look at my render setting tutorial.

http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/Vue_Render_Settings.pdf

A better setting for the AA is 4 min, 20 max and set the threshold to 90 to 100%.  Don't go above 46% on the overall quality slider (for every oercent over you can figure adding hours to the render).  Tile rendering uses more memory and does not make it look any better.

Check out Peggy's PDF for info on optimizing renders and rendertimes.

Thanks Peggy, very informative pdf. I'll run some tests using your guide.

However Vue is much to slow ,when it comes to antialiasing.It has been thpough all vue-versions.There is a lot work to do for e-on software.

I just read the Render PDF. Very helpful. Now what changes if you're doing an animation and saving to AVI vs a sequence of individual images?  I get that using broadcast with blurring is going to cause longer renders. Why is blurrring turned on for broadcast setting?

Clearly when creating an anmation that will be shown most likely at most at SD 480P resolution there's bound to be the render setting with the biggest bang for the render buck! All others will likely be overkill and produce long renders that really don't amount to anything more for you on the monitor screen.  By the way I am producing the animation at 24 fps and then I will pull that into an editing program timeline.  The likely output will be 24p mpg files ready for DVD authoring.....

Thoughts or tweaks for this approach to renders?  Thanks so much.....

I don't do animations, but for my part, always use the User settings.  Check each and every cranny on the Render Settings screen and get the most AA for your time spent.  Most of the presets are good for one things but bad for another.  Make a User setting that only takes good part and un-checks stuff you don't need.  An example, Broadcast uses good settings for the AA, but turns on Texture AA.  Most renders don't need that. 

THanks.  I certainly don't want to render any more than needed given the final destination of the render. I will try that....

SmedleyX - I noticed from your render settings that you were using Systematic AA. Unless you really need this then it's probably best not to use it. Systematic AA super samples every pixel during each render pass whereas Optimised only samples parts of the picture which need it during the last pass. I have tested with these settings in the past & while there can be slight noticable differences in certain cases, I generally wouldn't use it unless I was going to print or I wanted my picture to look the best it possibly can & I didn't mind the longer render waiting time.

Thanks Stormchaser. My concern is that I am rendering images as follows:

16:9 aspect 960x540
User Settings like broadcast with motion blur unchecked
Optimized AA settings of 4, 6 and 50%
Sun Light lens flare off
Shadows at 80%
I have a scene with 2 poser files - one of them animated on a planet terrain with several terrains, about 8 rocks, 8 plants with a total of over 700 objects - the spaceship unfortunately has a zillion parts inside and out- it is static and does not move.
sun light, a point light, and a spot light.
Pentium III 3.0 ghz with 2 gigs of memory. ATI FireGL 3100 video card.

Each render takes 3 to 4 minutes to JPG file.  I have 265 frames in the fly by scene. I'm This means that this 11 second scene will take 13 hours at least to render. Is that normal?  

When I put the images together in Sony Vegas for editing and producting MPG files for DVDs I am using the 24p settings to create a progressive rather than interlaced video.  I am playing this on 62" DLP screen so all imperfections show. The larger the image I render the better it looks.  When I render at 854x480 the times are shorter but the image when compressed to MPG doesn't look that good on a large screen. When I up the pixels things improve. I'm trying to find what is the point at which it's at it's best - I don't think I need an Ultra setting do I?

Sorry for the long explanation but I am hoping that someone would look at all of this an determine if anything is out of whack or if I am not considering something....tks!!!