3 hours is too long for me
We do a lot of renders for clients and try to keep them at around 5 mins max for exteriors, where we finish things off with a bit of photoshop.
Creating a pattern in a complex profile won't take very long and the render without displacement will be fast.
I did notice some weird behaviour when I was still trying stuff out with cinerender around AC18 times to get to a mode where we are now with render times nice and fast and decent enough results.
I think the best results were with creating a morph plane with subdivision that sat on top of the actual surface. It's been a few years, so maybe someone else who is actually using this stuff can shed more light on the subject.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nlArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
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