Cinerender rendering time

[Anonymous]

Good morning all (AEDT ),

I have been struggling with my render times the last few days. I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions? I've been leaving them over night, however I'm still struggling to get my high-def images out in that time.

I have 8GB of ram at the moment. Do you guys think I should get another 16 GB?

Are there a few tricks that you guys know that I don't? I read something recently about reducing the amount of polygons...

My images have lighting, 3D grass, trees etc. This is a neccessary inclusion for my renders ATM as I'm making marketing images.

Any help would be appreciated.

Michael

[rgarand]

More RAM will always help and more processor speed as well.

You need to isolate some of the items that are taking the time to rendering. Try rendering just the trees or just the grass... then turn on and off shadows. Minimize the amount of lights in your scene for these tests as well.

Once you find the object(s) that are taking most of the time to render, play with their settings, again with everything else turned off. Trees in the foreground will need the detail, but the trees in the background will NOT need as much detail. I sometimes turn off the shadows for every other tree in my background, not many can tell the difference.

[Anonymous]

I took your advice and change the detail level, replaced certain trees with 2D images and manipulated the settings of the grass.

Last nights render says that the elapsed time was 6 hours. Does anyone know whether this clock is accurate? If it is I may be able to increase my definition a little and add some more landscaping back into my image.

[Anonymous]

I downloaded the example files of the Graphisoft website and replicated some of the scenes they setup. Using 2d landscaping elements wherever possible has really cut down my rendering time. Only the night time scenes are taking a few hours now.

I was wondering if anyone knows whether it is possible to setup Archicad to render multiple scenes overnight? I would love to spend an afternoon setting up a few scenes and return in the morning to have three or four high quality new renders.

Michael