How Long Is Too Long For A Render?
DimensionTheory
Posts: 434
This is just something I'd been curious about, and I thought I'd make a thread and pool together some opinions on it. I'm wondering what everyone considers to be their limit for waiting on a render to finish. I know there are a lot of variables coming from quality settings etc but time is constant for everybody. So disregarding resolution and the contents of the image, how long on average is TOO long for you to wait for that final draft?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Just off the top of my head many of mine, and I do not claim to be good even, run close to 4 hours for final output at full size and full render settings.
For my Comic work I do a fully different approach as it requires from 4 to 12 full images in one work day. For those I need to keep the render time down to less than a full hour each to have time for other editing comic work needs.
Most of my renders I'd like to see done within a handful of hours. Drafts (if I remember or can be bothered to rattle off) I'd want to be done in less than an hour. I have let a render run for 4 days before cancelling it - I was not a happy camper. Doing the same render on a new computer a handful of days later had it rattle through in 5 hours (but it DID use 31GB RAM in the process, which may be why the render on the 8GB computer had issues .. ;))
I have the advantage of not having deadlines, I do this all as a hobby, I can give it up any time I*sniff* I like ... so apart from the impatience factor I don't mind a render running, for example, overnight or even into the next afternoon. I've still got, and use, the 'old' 8GB machine so if need be I use that whilst the bigger machine is chuntering on.
What I have to learn to do is to (un)set the occlusion and ray-trace options on stuff like hair that is no 'front and centre' to aid with the overall render times. I also, probably need to have render settings to draft work, and settings for final versions.
General rendering time for me is approx 5 minutes.
I don't know whether it's cos my laptop is i7 or what, but the vast majority of my renders don't go over the 5 min mark. I use the uberhair shader a lot, which possibly helps, plus I DON'T render for print....so my render sizes aren't too big.
If a render hits the 15 minute mark, I get antsy and impatient and wonder what the hell is happening and think it's too long. :D
For a final render, I prefer quality so time is not a factor really.
With the advancements in 3Delight over previous versions plus newer hardware, renders are taking less time. I also find that using the Advacned lights by Ageofarmour very helpful for reducing render times.
Greetings,
Depends. duh! I have a set of computers, 2 cores, 4 cores and effective 8 cores. The 2 core one is my laptop, and if I put something together which is really going to eat up time, I'll run the render overnight (which for me is 5-6 hours). If I want to go longer, but still be able to check on the progress, I'll run it on my 4 core Windows box, but still overnight + the next day at work is about my limit.
If I really, really like the image, but it's a serious CPU suck, I'll run it for a weekend by setting it up on my work computer (effective 8 cores) and starting it before I leave on Friday.
I rendered one image for longer than that, and it was over 150 hours, IIRC. I just basically didn't touch my laptop for that entire time. (Sadly my weakest system.)
Sometimes I'll let something run on my 4 core Windows box for a week, but nothing good's ever come of it. I used to network my home systems together and do LuxRender network renders, but I don't usually bother anymore.
So, tl;dr version - Overnight is fine. Overnight + the work day is moderately acceptable. The weekend (Friday @ 6pm - Monday @ 9am) is only for VERY special images.
If the render is longer than that, I've probably done something wrong. (It's SO hard to click that 'Cancel' button after it's rendered for 63 hours, though.)
-- Morgan
p.s. Just to note, that's for absolutely final render images. (Excluding touch up.) And rendered at twice the eventual resolution, because I like how downsampling makes images look. Draft renders take minutes, usually, and if they take longer than 5 minutes I'm likely getting annoyed.
Since I only use unbiased renderers, I get it all set up, do some spot renders and when it is all right and ready, start the render when i go to bed and usually save it when I get up. A few times when I have a heavy scene with lots of lights and ambient light I let it run longer
if its over 1 hour waste of time !
I've yet to figure out how to make renders take more than 20 minutes maximum. What are you guys doing to get hours and hours of render time?
I generally render in 1920x1080 with raytraced shadows and that rarely takes over ten.
my videos require 30secs per frame maximum and those are slow renders.
I needless to say do not use Daz studio esp 3Delight unless a still image for a BG maybe.
mostly iClone and Carrara, Poser on rare occasions.
I'm with you. Anything longer than 15 minutes is too long for me. Only exception is Luxrender on the 2.6 GHz dual-core Pentium and Octane on my 1.8 GHz single core computer. I let Octane run for 20 minutes Max. GPU reaches 165 degrees F. :)
I start to get impatient if a render goes over 2 hours, but unless I need my computer for something else, as long as it doesn't hang up for too long (5-10 minutes without progress), I'll usually just let it run.
Since I started using the AoA ambient light, render times are rarely longer than an hour unless there are a lot of transparencies and specialty shaders.
I'm willing to let one run overnight or all day if I know I'm not going to be home, but I hate to tie up my PC with a long render if I'm going to be home. I think an hour is my normal limit, though.....those overnight renders are rarely worth it to me.
Most of my renders are promo sized (1000x1300) and in general they run around an hour or two. That said they are not particularly complex and I try and set the lighting so its going to render fairly quickly. For more complex renders I wouldn't be overly put off by a 4 or 5 hour render time.
As long as there is an equivalent scale in relation to Time/Quality. For example a render that take P0 longer for an insignificant quality increase isn't really worth the time increase but if the quality is fairly equal to the time its worth the extra time spent. Or if it adds an element to a render thats worth the extra time like hair for example.
It also depends on the final usage for example I don't mind a longer render for a final promo or advertising image.
But if its for an example image for use in the forums I don't want to wait for an hour for it.
Of course the ideal is to have a way of controlling the Time/Quality scale. So it can be configured according to the requirements and usage of the image.
Also having a preview mode for fast renders is a plus. Nothing worse than a 24hr render with a glitch that could have been picked up with a preview.
Are you asking from a hobbyist stand point or from a professional stand point? These are only two of a least two dozen items I'd need qualified and/or quantified to give an answer.
Using an 8 core with Lux, around 12 hours for 10MP, 1 hour 0.1MP.
Scene setup is a big variable though. My longest render was 50 hours at 12MP.
I don't have a set limit of "too long", but excessive render times can be unpleasant. I think the longest render I've done took a few weeks (rendered in Bryce, I think it was to get some nice high quality clouds without visible bands), and that was a bit much.
For a one-month render contest, that basically gives you a single shot to get it right, which most of the time won't work. (although I think I got lucky that time.) During that time you can't reboot, so no Windows updates, no resetting for any applications that might jam up, hope for no power outages that last longer than the few minutes of UPS run time, etc. With my older computer it would pretty much tie up the computer and prevent use of other applications, although with the newer computer that's not really an issue and I can still do other stuff. However, it is VERY easy to whack the keyboard and screw it up a week in, then you have to start over. In fact I've started hiding the keyboard behind things where it can't be bumped during a render because I've screwed up long renders multiple times by somehow hitting it with an elbow or dropping my pen on it or whatever.
I'm going to say max of a few days is a stress-free upper end of the range for me since I can still make and test quite a few changes in a month, and if it can finish rendering overnight that's ideal. I can work on the scene during the day doing adjustments and test spot renders, use the computer for other things without interference, then kick off a complete scene render overnight and it'll be done while I'm sleeping and immediately ready to view the instant I wake up.
Of course faster is always better, because the faster you can see the results, the faster you can make corrections, and the more likely you are to try new things just to see what will happen and thus be able to accomplish more. Hours is way better than days, minutes is way better than hours. Instant would be ultra-handy, but we're not there yet.
I usually run my final image over night (8-10 hours). Most of them are done by the time I get up, and the only ones that have taken longer than that were a couple that I did that involved 4-8 people, a complex environment and lighting AND rendered through a volume cam - these were pre-EZ Volume cam days, much faster now unless the quality really needs to be cranked. Draagonstorm's batch render script usually gets through two or three renders by the time I wake up. Unfortunately I need my laptop for Uni as well so I can't leave it running through the day if it's not done by the time I leave for class.
So I guess my line in the sand is overnight, but it's more externally imposed by needing the laptop back than anything else.
I like it to be done within 24 hours of pressing the render button.
But if it is something special?
I can let it run a week.
After that I usually forget what it was all about to begin with.
I've run renders as long as 3 days before now, usually using Luxrender. Most of my 3DL renders are done within a matter of minutes, but some of the bigger scenes took up to 18 hours to complete. One render I did a while back for my christmas piece actually took 28 hours of 3DL render time simply because of the high level of quality I placed on it.
For me, the quality is more important than how long it takes.
I render in DAZ Studio only (3Delight) and everything that takes more than 30 minutes is a no-go :-)
Ok, I have to admit that I keep my scenes, especially lightning, simple bacause I do a lot of postwork. Sometimes, after postworking my images look completely different from the original render. And I always render my images in several passes, which should render in a few minutes each.
Not directly related to Render waiting time but you may consider the following results from studies in the 1990's on tolerable computer response time.
(a) 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
(b) 1.0 second is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
(c) 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done.
(d) 15 seconds is about the limit for Web users tolerance for a Web page download. However another study found that page loading delays from 2 seconds to 2 minutes had strong effects on users’ perceptions of websites. The results indicate that Web pages that were downloaded faster were perceived to be more interesting than the slower ones. Their results also suggest that 41 seconds is the cut-off for long delays.
(Full article: http://cba.unl.edu/research/articles/548/download.pdf)
The main thing for me is the ability to do informative test renders quickly. I can let my final render run while I'm doing something else or over night, but test renders you cant really do that. I'm a major tweaker too so they add up. Even though I've gotten good at optimizing (low render settings, no fancy materials while doing lighting, the simplest light-rig you can get away with for materials) I probably do 20-50 test renders (some are partial thankfully), If some element makes it so I can't do a test render of it in under 5 minutes, I won't use it much.
For really fast and simple test renders (to check lightning, shadows, or something similar) you should check the "Progressive Render" option in the render settings. This gives you a good view on your scene in just a few seconds.
I've got into the habit of compositing in Photoshop, so usually each image requires several renders: a diffuse and specular render for each of the lights and an additional render to pick up ambient glow. So I will usually have to run from six to ten renders for each image. Often these will only take about 10-15 minutes each, but anything over an hour I would consider too long.
The renders which take the longest are those with a lot of reflections where Ray Trace depth has to be increased, and those with certain types of hair (Neftis3D, I'm looking at you!). But the wait on those occasions is usually worth it.
Yes, same here. I usually render each light individually. Then I often use a specular render ( the main light only, set to specular only), a depth mask of the whole scene and some individual masks of main items. This is all very useful and gives you much freedom for postworking.
for a hobby, you could get away with 10-20 minutes with with DS 3Dlight, and presets. Do, work in photoshop or gimp and still get amazing results. Sometimes with Reality 2 I let it render for 14 hours, and I will be very disappointed. It really depends on how creative you are. Don't stop at just the result of the render, that is just the foundation to great art. What you do in post is where the art is expressed.
I look at the quality and if needed I let it run some more.
Usually I keep the pc running all night and that is long enough most of the time.
What renderer are you using?
...I can deal with 4- 6 hours, but 25 or more, as is usual with LuxRender/Reality is way too much. With 3Delight even on a long render my system barely breaks a sweat. Crikey, even Bryce renders faster than Reality/Lux.
If I've taken a week or two setting up a render (for contests) I don't mind the eight or nine hours to render it overnight. My computer has nothing better to do, lol! That render time is when I have eight people in the scene, and they honestly can easily go ten hours.
For the art studio renders, the shading rate is always .20 or .30 max and all settings on excellent quality, so the renders average an hour to hour and a half for the 1200 to 2000 pixel dimensions. Smaller 800 pixel renders are usually half an hour.
So my answer would be 30 minutes to a couple hours on easy, simple things, and more difficult things require overnighters. :)
And to answer that question of why these can take so long- my shading rate, among other things. .20 is a really good quality. There's so many things that increase render time (size of scene, number of props and people, type of hair) that it's a combination of many factors, including what your computer can handle.