Question about how rendering works (low level)

DDCreate

I know it's a 360deg environment but in a picture being rendered, is my computer trying to render the WHOLE 360 or just what is in the camera view? I ask because I want to minimize the work my computer has to do when rendering and I'm not sure if I should hide things that might be pulling juice away from what is in my viewport. Hopefully that made sense.

Thanks for any answers :)

WendyLuvsCatz

well depends on what engine

if iray it needs to load all the geometry onto your graphics card whether in view or not

DDCreate

Yes i do render Iray, I always for get to say that. And that answers my question. Thanks!

mikael-aronsson

Things that does not cast any shadows into the viewport you can try and remove/hide, it only renders what is visible but to do that it need access to all geometry, it fire rays that bounce around surfaces and if you for example have a tree just to the right of the viewport it may cast a shadow that is visible in the viewport and for that you need to have the object there.

For things in the distance (mountains, tree lines, city at the horizon) you can often replace it with a billboard (a single polygon with an image on it facing the camera), for example render the city first, save the image and slam it onto a polygon and create a new scene, this can speed up the rendering/lowering the memory requirements).

So if an object is not visible in the viewport and does not cast any visible shadows or reflect on anything in the viewport then yes you can hide it and it will help.

With iray you have to be careful because sometimes removing objects not visible may still have an impact on the result because of the way light is calculated.