Thursday, June 12, 2014

Balancing Rendering Quality and Rendering Speed.

Balancing Rendering Quality and Rendering Speed.

A complex, high-resolution image takes time to render. Every 3D designer has to live with this in-escapable truth. But that doesn't mean you have to wait hours every time you want to render an image. Adapt your workflow to include faster, lower-resolution renders at intermediate stages of your design. This is a faster way to fine-tune your settings before you commit to larger, high-resolution render.

Rendering Quality

When you first create a rendering we recommend that you start with a small rendering, 600px width, and just a few passes, start with 20. This will be enough for you to evaluate your lights, shadows, reflections and special effects without spending too much time watching a progress bar. When you are getting the results you want with a 20-pass render, increase the rendering size and add more passes.
 
Rendering Quality vs Speed
Rendering quality is largely determined by two things:
  • Image resolution - how many pixels wide and tall
  • Number of passes - the number of times the rendering engine processes the image
Speed is the inverse of quality. Meaning the bigger the image and more passes you make, the longer it will take to render.
 
 
Special Effects may require more rendering passes
Blurry reflection, like the lights in the wet concrete in this image, require more rendering passes. So, plan this into your workflow and know that additional time will be needed to evaluate design with special effects. See: Blurry Reflection for an example.