Render times

[Jeff B]

Hi sorry to ask probably a silly question. But I have just finished a short film that is about 1minute long and it took 22hours to render is this normal or could it have anything to do with that fact I used an extra light and so created two lots of shadows. I'm using a MacBook with AM v15.

 

Any help or advise will be great thanks.

[Jeff B]

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QUOTE(Jeff B @ Dec 1 2008, 12:35 PM) 287969[/snapback]

Hi sorry to ask probably a silly question. But I have just finished a short film that is about 1minute long and it took 22hours to render is this normal or could it have anything to do with that fact I used an extra light and so created two lots of shadows. I'm using a MacBook with AM v15.

 

Any help or advise will be great thanks.

 

 

Sorry this film is more then 100mb so cant upload it but you can see it on my website. www.jbanitamtions.webeden.co.uk

thanks.

[itsjustme]

Lots of things can affect how long a frame takes to render, Jeff. Some of them are things like reflections, particles (hair), subsurface scattering, ambiance occlusion, multi-pass rendering, motion blur, size of the image, displacement maps, etc. So, it depends on the scene.

 

As for the size of the video file...you should be able to get that down to a few MB using compression.

 

Hope that helps.

[frosteternal]

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Hi sorry to ask probably a silly question. But I have just finished a short film that is about 1minute long and it took 22hours to render is this normal...

 

I'm in the middle of rendering a ~5-minute short and budgeted about 1.5 months render time, after pessimistically calculating ~6 minutes a frame. (My characters are stylized and shots are optimized for fast renders. Yes, 6 minutes per frame is fast.)

 

Rendering takes time. It is affected by... resolution, lights, ray-tracing, (shadows, reflections), number of patches, complexity of materials, number of image maps, and what is visible in each frame. (close-ups of a complex character with a detailed procedural material and reflective eyes will take longer to render than the same character in a long shot.)

Other things that affect render time are hardware related, like how much memory you have in your computer, and processor speed, and whether or not you close unnecessary background programs.

 

I calculated each frame your short rendered took just over a minute to render - that is very zippy!

[Jeff B]

Whoo thats is a long time for a short film, I never realized that this animation lark could take so long lol..

Thank you for everyone's help

 

Cheers Jeff

 

Thanks for the advise on getting my film to upload

 

Please Visit My Website

[Gerry]

As stated above, render time can be affected by a lot of variables. If you want to take some time to experiment, save different versions of your prj and remove various settings and see what's affecting the render time. You might have something turned on (like Ambient Occlusion or ray-traced shadows) that you don't need or turned on by mistake.

 

And you don't need to render the whole movie each time. Render just a handful of frames and check the average frame render time.

[Rodney]

Keith Lango had this to say to the A:M Community many years ago about lighting and render times. I think it holds just as true today as it did back then:

 

...the final render lasts forever and is the final, permanent record of your efforts. So invest in it as much as you can. Don't be overconcerned with render times. Keep an eye on them, but don't let them brow beat you into making a bad image.

 

 

As Gerry mentioned for testing purposes you can have A:M render the specific frames you want. In the Render options you can type specific frames or series of frames into the Range:

 

1-1000 (Set the Step option to 100 to get every 100th frame)

 

...or set Custom Settings to get the frames you want by frame or series:

1, 24-35, 60, 1000

1-24

[Jeff B]

As for the size of the video file...you should be able to get that down to a few MB using compression.

 

Hope that helps.

 

I'm having trouble uploading my fill i Have compressed the fill but it still will not upload to this forum.

[frosteternal]

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I'm having trouble uploading my fill i Have compressed the fill but it still will not upload to this forum.

I believe there is a 5 meg limit per file for uploading files on the forum.

[mfortunato]

Hi Jeff -

 

I really liked the concept of your animation. It definitely made me laugh. As you continue to learn the program and continue to gain an understanding of animation, you will be able to take this even further.

 

Regarding rendering times - if you are looking to just get an idea if your animation is working, you can render it out in Shaded mode and not Final mode. This will render MUCH faster as it doesn't take into account shadows, reflections, etc. This will help you to quickly see if an animation needs tweaking before final rendering.

 

Also, as stated above, if you are rendering a long sequence or series of sequences, you can break them up. Render them in bits at a time. The animation doesn't have to be rendered all at once.

 

Great job! I look forward to seeing more.

 

- Michael

[Fuchur]

22h hours for 1 minute isnt long at all.

Pixar-movies need sometimes one or two hours for ONE frame on a really fast machine...

 

What you got there is only 60 X 25 frames = 1500 frames.

 

22h = 22 * 60 = 1320 min

1500 / 1320 -> 68 seconds a frame...

 

That is not long at all. Of course it depends on your scene... use particles, high reflection-levels and so on and you can come up with 22h a frame if you want to

*Fuchur*

[Jeff B]

Hi Jeff -

 

I really liked the concept of your animation. It definitely made me laugh. As you continue to learn the program and continue to gain an understanding of animation, you will be able to take this even further.

 

Regarding rendering times - if you are looking to just get an idea if your animation is working, you can render it out in Shaded mode and not Final mode. This will render MUCH faster as it doesn't take into account shadows, reflections, etc. This will help you to quickly see if an animation needs tweaking before final rendering.

 

Also, as stated above, if you are rendering a long sequence or series of sequences, you can break them up. Render them in bits at a time. The animation doesn't have to be rendered all at once.

 

Great job! I look forward to seeing more.

 

- Michael

 

Hi Michael

Thanks for your kind comments I am very new to all this and I'm loving every minute.

[Jeff B]

Thank you to everyone who has commented, I need all the help I can get lol

Thanks again

Jeff

[photoman]

Pixar-movies need sometimes one or two hours for ONE frame on a really fast machine...

 

I remember hearing that the average frame time for Pixar was 6 hours and the longest was 90!!! on a INTEL SERVER!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

As for render times I try to stay in the 3min or less per frame timelimit .

Tips would be to set frame rate to 24 FPS and use less splines and complex materials.

 

Photoman

[Gorf]

My current ten-second AVI is taking 15 minutes per frame to render.... 3.4 GHz P4 with HT, 2GB memory rendering to 1080p HD