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Too much time rendering on ArchiCAD 20 64 bit

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hello all.

I would like to see if someone here experience this same behavior. I have this design that takes hours (about 3 hours to render) and it is a not so big project and I just got this Dell desktop workstation with Xeon processor running at 3gb, 16gb on RAM and an Nvidia Quadro K4000 6gb video card. See pictures attached and let me know if you guys can advice on what am I doing wrong here
9 REPLIES 9
gavinNZz
Advocate
The only advice I can give is don't bother rendering anything with Archicad. Live render systems like twinmotion and enscape make Archicad's render system obsolete. Even Graphisoft realize this that's why they have jumped in bed with Epic games and made the new Twinmotion version available for all archicad users. I think its due out in November. The original version is free to use as well.
Planworks Ltd
Residential Designer based in Tauranga, NZ
Archicad v9+
VR enthusiast.
Always wants more!
Lingwisyer
Guru
Hardware wise, rendering with CineRender is all about your multi-threaded processor speed and your RAM capacity. Still, in the grand scheme of things, CineRender is a slow renderer for what it produces... There are a couple of other threads around regarding optimising your render settings to reduced render times. You also need to ask yourself, how much you really gain from ramping up the settings.

On a side note, your CPU is a bit under powered for CineRender. 3GHz quadcore... You would have been better off going for a i7 as you would at least get double the effective core count at 30% faster speed...




Ling.

AC22-23 AUS 7000Help Those Help You - Add a Signature
Self-taught, bend it till it breaksCreating a Thread
Win10 | R5 2600 | 16GB | GTX1660 
Carstenem
Expert
Hi, first ignore the advise not to use Cinerender.

Many People have the wrong conception out there that this render is way too slow, where it actually is the settings they use that makes it so slow. Yes of course it's not as fast as vray or Corona but there are dedicated renders only. They can't draw an Elevation, add dimensions or draw a detail. So they are programmed for speed and quality.

Twinmotion is good but no where near vray or Corona. There are so many options out there now but if you like to stay inside ARCHICAD then Cinerender can produce decent renders too.

Don't use the Cinerender high quality presets, they are too slow, choose medium for final rendering but you need to adjust some of the settings, to get the right balance between speed and quality.
All render engine have a lot of settings and need to be fine tuned. Twinmotion is a bit of an exception and good enough for most CGI's, so it's something you should look into in the future.

Cinerender a couple of tips:

Under Effects
- use color mapping for better results
Under Global Illumination
- primary method use irradiance cache default settings
- secondary method use irradiance cache, intensity 150
- Sampling
- Stochastic Samples - Method medium
Irradiance cache
- record density - medium
- cache refinement - medium
under options
- Antialiasing - minimum and max level 4x4

Don't use 3D grass unless you do a close up where you only see a small part of grass that works fine. One last thing , think about where you like to show of your image, do yo need to print, if so which size etc. No point rendering an image at 4K if you only show it of on a normal HD screen resolution 1920 x 1080.

Hope this helps
Carsten
www.asmtechbase.com
https://www.youtube.com/asmtechbase

AC 3 to 26 -Windows 7 - 24GB - 8core 4.4Ghz
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Carstenem wrote:
under options
- Antialiasing - minimum and max level 4x4
Just out of interest I tried your settings.
But I found ...
- Antialiasing - minimum 1x1 and max level 4x4

This sped things up even more.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Carstenem
Expert
Great Barry, thanks yes minimum 1x1 is faster but you have to watch out for shadow elements/aeras , if you get artifacts then go up to 2x2 or 4x4. Sure worth a try first with 1x1 !

Carsten
Carsten
www.asmtechbase.com
https://www.youtube.com/asmtechbase

AC 3 to 26 -Windows 7 - 24GB - 8core 4.4Ghz
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
Antialiasing is only used by the standard renderer, though. I would recommend using the physical renderer unless you have almost no reflection on materials. In most cases with any reasonably sized model with metal / glass / other glossy surfaces the physical renderer should be quicker, especially if set up for a fast render.

Also, on a side note, it would be nice if we could share cinerender scenes without having to ZIP them, since right now you can't directly attach them to a post.

This saves us a lot of typing out settings.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Carstenem
Expert
Yes this is correct Erwin. Saying this , even so the manual mentioned that the physical render should be faster, ther difference is very small if you tweak the setting right with the standard renderer.
It probably really depends on the project AND the camera position. Like if you further away it will be a small difference but if you have a close up shot where you have a lot of glass reflections, gloss, blur, etc. the physical renderer should be faster.
Carsten
www.asmtechbase.com
https://www.youtube.com/asmtechbase

AC 3 to 26 -Windows 7 - 24GB - 8core 4.4Ghz
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
I must admit I haven't tested it since probably AC19, but the setting we use yields very quick results for a 195x135 mm at 300 dpi render. Ussually under 3 minutes for exterior renders. There are some artifacts in shadowy areas, but since we used a bit of post production in photoshop with a water colour Action and overlaying sketch renders to give it all a bit more sketchy look, this doesn't matter much.

I did notice the same settings didn't perform that well on i7 processor machines though. Cinerender seems to do well with Xeon processors.

My current workstation has a pretty old E5 as well, but at 3.7 GHz a bit faster than OP's machine.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Carstenem
Expert
yes the i7 is just pretty slow to handle this type of calculations. Will have a look at your renderingscene file, thanks.
Carsten
www.asmtechbase.com
https://www.youtube.com/asmtechbase

AC 3 to 26 -Windows 7 - 24GB - 8core 4.4Ghz