What is up with render time?

[CipesDesign]

Hey Sac, What resolution settings are you using? What rendering mode (I assume 'final quality rw's)? The export resolution (found in the document pref's) DPI will have a big effect on speed.

Peter Cipes

[Kevin]

What exactly does the export resolution setting affect?

[CipesDesign]

As I understand it (which is on a fairly cursory level) the export resolution affects how fine or grainy an exported image will be. Generally, if my goal is on-screen presentation around 100 dpi (dots per inch) seems to give decent quality and fairly quick rendering times, while 300 dpi (which I would use for printing) shows very little difference on a normal size screen but takes 3 times longer to export or render. With a bit of trial-and-error you should be able to find the right resolution for your needs.

Peter Cipes

Mac G5 1.8 dual/1.5 gigs RAM/OS 10.3.3

VectorWorks Industry Series 11.0.0

[SacSurfin']

Not naming names but previously modeling using a different software package I've noticed that before modeling mostly for animations at 29.97 frames per second with multiple effects and raytracing my render time for a ten second clip or basically 300 frames seems to take about as long a one frame vectorworks render. It takes basically two hours to render my image file .

PowerMac G4

1.25 GB memory

[Kaare Baekgaard]

>It takes basically two hours to render my image file.

I get the same within seconds ? or at most minutes. Are you a very heavy user of shadowcasting lights?

[SacSurfin']

Being used for client's full color brochures they are rendered at 300 dpi and 9.5 inches wide while using a skydome and actually somewhat transparent windows with reflections. It takes about forty five minutes to a hour and fifteen to render then anotherhour at the least to export as image. They are all at least 30MB files and some get up to about 60MB dependent on the size of the house and the trim/props. Adding image props for scenery makes rendering almost impossible.

[MikeB]

How many light sources do you have in the file?

[Dave Donley]

Hello SacSurfin':

Try using the Render Bitmap tool instead of exporting the image. That way it will only have to render once. 9.5 x 300 < 4000 pixels of 32-bit color which is the limit for image sizes created by the tool, so you should be OK to do this. Then you can just copy and paste into whatever graphics app.

If you don't really need refractions in the glass you could use just a Mirror reflectivity and Plain transparency shader if you're currently using glass.

If you can send it, I would like to see this file. Maybe there are other ways of speeding this up.

[Dave Donley]

BTW, The export resolution document preference only affects PICT and WMF (on Windows) export. The Export Image File command is not affected by this setting.

[Cloud Hidden]

quote:

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It takes about forty five minutes to a hour and fifteen to render then anotherhour at the least to export as image.

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As long as you know that the rendering is the one you will want, you don't have to render it fully before then exporting it. You can select "Final Render" and then cmd-. to stop it immediately and go right to Export Image. Saves you about 1/2 the total time.

In fact, that's always irked me. I wish there was a way to set my rendering preferences, such as a palette??, so that I wouldn't have to choose the Render command to set the parameters used by export and go through that cmd-. stuff.

[Kaare Baekgaard]

Cloud Hidden: Saves you about 1/2 the total time.

Thanks for the tip. This is new to me.

[SacSurfin']

Well it's not a problem anymore. Man , the Mac G5 is a beast, two hours is now about twenty minutes. All hail Mac