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C4D render optimization
Hi,
I’m looking for suggestions on optimizing materials and render settings to reduce render times.
Initial renders took 6-9mins (PSD sequence, 1920HD, 16bit, 450 frames)
With some research i have gotten the same test frame down to 2m15s, but am looking for more help. I am not using GI, but do have reflective surfaces on an iPad and a large ice-rink surface.
Some tweaked settings are below.
Render Settings:
AntiAliasing: “best”, threshold 20%
Multipass: Reflection, Mat Refl, 2x Object BuffersMaterial Settings:
ice surface:
reflection tab min samples “10” (was 15)
reflection tab max samples “80” (was 200)
iPad Screen:
reflection tab max samples “60” (was 128)
reflection tab accuracy “30%” 9(was 50%)
iPad compositing tag:
“force AA
Planes with Luminated surfaces (as lights)
compositing tags: no GI, no receive/generate GICinema 4D Project File: here
Example of Scene:
Thanks in advance!
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7 Replies
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All in all your scene is reasonably well optimized for the material and lighting choices you’ve made. One thing you could do without altering too much is to set the Render AA to 1×1 instead of 1×4. The ipod will still get 1×4 AA because of the compositing tag and the floor doesn’t seem to require much AA because of the soft reflections.
The real time killer in your scene is the blurry reflection on the ice floor. You can cut your render time by about 2/3 by eliminating it. You might try rendering an object buffer for the floor and then apply a blur filter to the reflection pass in post.
Seems like it might also be time for a hardware upgrade. Frame 136 rendered in about 26 seconds on my i7 Windows7 machine overclocked to 4 ghz. With AA at 1×1 and no blurry floor reflection it rendered in 11 seconds.
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Interesting, thanks for taking the time to look into that. I’m using a MBP laptop 2.93ghz with 8gb ram so there certainly is a bottle neck there.
Can you elaborate on rendering an object buffer for the floor? It makes sense to render the floor without a reflection, use the reflection pass to add the reflection and in AE blur the crisp reflection, but i don’t understand how to render the Main Image without reflections and still have the multipass reflection render.
My process would be to uncheck “refraction” “reflection” in Render Settings Options, render out the Main Image, then rerender multipass with those options checked.
I know i should be able to do it in 1 step but could use a pointer.
thanks! -
Was your 26s render time for a full frame HD with multipass, or in the viewport?
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probably full frame HD with multipass because I’m seeing 31 seconds for frame 136 on my 2008 MacPro 2.8 8 core (and 12 seconds with AA 1×1 and no blur in the reflection)
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You would render reflection as-is, except reduce the floor material’s blurriness to 0%. Specify an object buffer in the floor object’s compositing tag and add a corresponding object buffer in multipass settings. Then, in AE, I would put a second copy of the reflection pass on top of the existing one, precomp them, and use the floor object buffer as a luma matte for the top reflection layer. Then apply a blur reflection to the top reflection layer.
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Yeah, that was for the picture viewer render with mp.
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Thanks Brian and Adam. Perspective on other desktop systems render times certainly helps.
Trying to make sense of Adam’s description…Heres how i understand it:
Image would be rendered with the floor texture and a crisp reflection. Object buffer would isolate the floor, and duplicating reflection pass (+blur) on top would add a ghosted/soft reflection on top of the crisp base. End result, original crisp render with burned in blurred reflection.
This is certainly a work around and i will likely pursue it.
Lots of thanks.
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