As I started the image it seemed to almost lock Bryce up. I was unable to stop the render and after 1 day of letting it just do its thing it had only rendered maybe 1% and was some astronomical number projected for the completion time.

Here are the settings so that maybe we can figure out how to get this to work. Admittedly I have some high setting but with the fake HDRI the image completed in 30 minutes!!!

Any suggestions on what we can do to reduce these audacious render times?

;)

Cool.

You are not seeing any shadows, take the HDRI quality to ZERO.

Other than that, no offense at all, but this is a recipe for long render times. HDRI is soft shadows. Soft shadows and Glass, takes forever on its own, then blurry reflections on top of that? And, then the Premium setting? And, then 64 RPP?

Recipe for a life long render.

Yeah, if it were me having to do this;

-I would use a fake hdri, no soft shadows, as you cannot really see shadows anyway.

-Blurry Reflections? I never use it, its a huge render time multiplier. When I want to go for that look, I will use a fine, small bump at a small level (1-3), and then use the Super AA at 16 RPP.

Yikes some things I did not know impossible!

Cool some great tips! The version on the left is the Fake HDRI and the one right is the real one. I may just stick with the fake and use your suggestions. I was more curious than anything else at how to bring the real HDRI to a faster speed.

Thanks you guys.

Yikes some things I did not know impossible!

Cool some great tips! The version on the left is the Fake HDRI and the one right is the real one. I may just stick with the fake and use your suggestions. I was more curious than anything else at how to bring the real HDRI to a faster speed.

Thanks you guys.

I find that lowering the max ray depth and RPP give a fast, although noisy, render. But you get a very fast overall scene look with other high settings, like blurry reflections, soft shadows, HDRI  etc... before the final. Plop rendering works for details, but not overall scene lighting.

On transparent mats the raydepth and internal reflections really affect rendertimes. TIR also usually affects the brightness of your transparent object.