long render times

[cribbidaj]

Hello -

 

I have purchased a custom built PC with an AMD 320+Ghz dual core processor with 2 gig of RAM and I'm still running into long rendering times. Rendering a 20 sec (491 frames) animation in "preview" mode at low res (320x240) is still taking over 2 hours. My choreography's ground and sky are just the default A:M backgrounds. I am running A:M 11.1 on my startup disc and rendering to a seperate internal hard drive. Surely this rendering time is abnormally long. Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Chris

[Stuart Rogers]

320GHz? Wow, that *is* a fast PC! <grin!>

 

How long it takes to render very much depends upon what you're trying to render. I've had 20-second animations that have taken over three days to render - admittedly on a far slower PC than yours.

 

There are many things that can cause long render times, such as reflectivity, transparency, materials, hair, multipass rendering, etc, etc.

[luckbat]

That does indeed sound extremely slow. But it all depends on what you're rendering.

 

Volumetrics? Elaborate lighting? Reflections? Materials? Hair/particles?

 

If the answer is 'no,' it's possible you may be using one or more of these without realizing it. As a test, try turning off shadows, particles and reflections in your render settings to see if that helps. If it doesn't, you may need to post the project file for others to take a look at.

[robcat2075]

7200 seconds/491 frames = ~15 seconds/frame. That's pretty fast. But it all depends on what is in your scene.

 

If you're just testing motion, rendering in shaded mode (AKA "real-time") is faster.

[luckbat]

Assuming your machine is not, in fact, 320Ghz, could you re-post that processor speed? If it's 3.20Ghz, then 15fps would seem to be a bit on the slow side. If it's 320Mhz, then 15fps is quite reasonable, as Robcat said.

[cribbidaj]

Assuming your machine is not, in fact, 320Ghz, could you re-post that processor speed? If it's 3.20Ghz, then 15fps would seem to be a bit on the slow side. If it's 320Mhz, then 15fps is quite reasonable, as Robcat said.

 

Whoops! It is a 3.2 Ghz processor. I am rendering particles and fur - I figure the model's hair material is considered fur? I'll try rendering in shaded mode as suggested. Guess I'll turn off shading and shadows as well, though it would help visualize the charm (or lack thereof) of the scene. Still seems like a long render for 20 seconds of choreography.

 

Thanks for all of your responses.

 

Chris

[luckbat]

I've heard that shadows on hair is a huge render hit. Let us know how it turns out.

[robcat2075]

though it would help visualize the charm (or lack thereof) of the scene.

If you're judging lighting or appearance, just render a few representative frames, like every 50th. Don't bother with a full render until those look good.

 

If it's 3.20Ghz, then 15fps would seem to be a bit on the slow side. If it's 320Mhz, then 15fps is quite reasonable,

seconds/frame is not fps

[luckbat]

seconds/frame is not fps

All right, but you knew what I meant.

[cribbidaj]

Turning shadows and rendering in shaded mode cut rendering time considerably. The same animation took only 20 minutes in this mode. Thanks for your help. My rigging skills are still questionable, even with TSM2 (possibly my best purchase this year), so I still have a ways to go before I have an animation worth rendering in final mode anyway.

 

-Chris

http://heartdancemusic.com/chriswalters.html

[ArgleBargle]

Hello -

 

I have purchased a custom built PC with an AMD 320+Ghz dual core processor with 2 gig of RAM and I'm still running into long rendering times. Rendering a 20 sec (491 frames) animation in "preview" mode at low res (320x240) is still taking over 2 hours. My choreography's ground and sky are just the default A:M backgrounds. I am running A:M 11.1 on my startup disc and rendering to a seperate internal hard drive. Surely this rendering time is abnormally long. Any suggestions?

 

Having just experimented (and come up with a reportable bug) with this today, I'll comment. I'm running a dual 3.4GhZ Dell and I just upgraded to A:M 12.0. By "preview" mode I assume you mean "shaded" or "wireframe/shaded" mode. Doing a render with the maximum in shaded quality (set with Page-Up/Page-Down) is a bit on the slow side. I found that 11.1 is much slower than 12.0 for that type of render. (I've only recently gotten 12.0 so I haven't gotten to compare "final" render times.)

 

From your render times, I was going to guess you were rendering some hair. I saw in later posts you were. Hair density makes a difference. I've got hair in the render I'm doing, but it's very un-dense leaves on a small tree.

 

That said, kudos to the development staff at Hash. I took the same .prj file and loaded it into 11.1 and 12.0 while I wrote this post. I started a render (relevant details: 640x480, hair on with the hair being leaves, Polys per patch = 1, shaded render, decals on) in 12.0 and estimated complete time after 30 seconds was 35 minutes. Abort render, save project; re-open in 11.1 and re-render. After 30 seconds, estimated render time was over 6 hours. I'm a programmer, and my professional opinion is: that's a helluva good improvement between versions. Wahoo!

 

If you're concerned with speed in rendering (I am, considering my project at hand), upgrade to 12.0 for "shaded" renders. Avoid calculated materials like the plague. They are very cool, but cpu consumption is wicked. Use that for photo-realism, not quick-and-dirty animation. I've swung to decals for results in that arena. For a segment I did that needed some fruit, I bought some objects to save time from Eggprops (yes, it's a plug), but I stripped the materials from them. Why? The calculated materials pushed final renders upward to 3 minutes per frame. Ack! I'm doing nearly 10,000 frames per vid. I thanked Eggprops for the models, then removed materials and did simple coloring. It looked fine in the animimation.

 

Speed? Avoid hair and calculated materials. Speed and quality? Use decals.

[robcat2075]

By "preview" mode I assume you mean "shaded" or "wireframe/shaded" mode.

 

"Preview" mode is a term encountered when the render panel does not have "advanced" checked. It equates to "final" render with multipass ON and set to 1 pass. Shadows are enabled.

 

"Real-time" equates to shaded mode, which cannot do shadows.

[ArgleBargle]

By "preview" mode I assume you mean "shaded" or "wireframe/shaded" mode.

 

"Preview" mode is a term encountered when the render panel does not have "advanced" checked. It equates to "final" render with multipass ON and set to 1 pass. Shadows are enabled.

 

"Real-time" equates to shaded mode, which cannot do shadows.

 

I misunderstood, then. Regardless, shaded mode sure renders a lot faster now in 12.

[cribbidaj]

I just rendered the same low- res scene in shaded mode in A:M 12 - whoa! 40 seconds as opposed to 20 minutes in v.11!

 

-Chris

[FlyingMonkieBoy]

My choreography's ground and sky are just the default A:M backgrounds.

 

I know that this has nothing to do with waht u guys are talking about but how do you make your own backgrounds? i'm trying to make a beach...oh if you put a tennis ball in the microwave will it explode?

[Nichod]

Sorry for poking in on this thread and going slightly off topic, but I'm researching Render times and it seems like its appropriate.

 

Is the A:M hair creating actual geometry at render time? I was under the impression that it was a simulated effect.

[luckbat]

A:M hair is a particle effect. It doesn't create geometry.

[martin]

A:M hair is a particle effect. It doesn't create geometry.

Yes it does. If creates A LOT of geometry, especially in the raytracer.

[luckbat]

Yikes, mea culpa.

 

What's the nature of the geometry? I mean, the hair itself is particles, isn't it? It's not like it's creating one spline per hair follicle... right?

[Paul Forwood]

Have a close look at particle hair. It is a string of folded cards. That is two patches for every segment of every strand. That can amount to alot of geometry. Add surface effects and shadows and you can see why renders slow down, especially at close quarters.

[luckbat]

Huh. I always thought those V-shaped hair strands were some sort of sprite effect.

 

So if hair is made up of patches, why is it considered a particle effect?

[martin]

Huh. I always thought those V-shaped hair strands were some sort of sprite effect.

 

So if hair is made up of patches, why is it considered a particle effect?

All of the particle code is used... Random positioning, dynamics, the concept of a "system."

[luckbat]

Okay, so the particle system is used to generate data which is then used to generate patches which form the hair? Am I summarizing it right?

[martin]

Okay, so the particle system is used to generate data which is then used to generate patches which form the hair? Am I summarizing it right?

Exactly. Because there can be 100,000s of hairs (sometimes millions!), there is also a complicated level of code to only allocate those that could possibly be visible (in frame, in front of other geometry).

[luckbat]

Cool. Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me.