Rendering Time - Objects vs. Standard Tools

[Thomas Allan Palmer]

Which should render faster:

1. Wire fence library object?

2. Wire fence made from columns and complex profiles?

3. Wire fence library object created from 2 above?

[vistasp]

The one with the least polygons!

Do you really need to model each wire? I would think it best for the wired part of the fence to be an image with alpha transparency.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Maybe a Wire Fence texture assigned to a Surface that is properly set up in CineRender in terms of Bump, Transparency, etc. would be the best solution.
All those individual wires will probably kill your rendering speed if there are too many of them (I don't know the exact limit though).

[Erwin Edel]

I would use a surface. There are some metal mesh surfaces in the surface library, they would get you close enough.

Before cinerender, I would've done this where the metal wire mesh only showed up in my sketchrender overlayed on top of photorender. Either with morph lines or with a vectorial fill.

[Erwin Edel]

Allthough, if it is a one off render I could do overnight and modelling it with an existing library part is faster: I'd opt for the overall faster modelling and just leave the render running overnight.

[Thomas Allan Palmer]

Hi All,

Thanks for your input.

I opted for "real" fence close to where my rendering will take place. Used a surface texture for the remaining. By the way, I created the texture by rendering a section of the real fence model then exported to Photoshop to tweak and then create a surface in ArchiCAD.

Cheers!

[Anonymous]

excellent way of doing it, gets the best of both worlds.
did you tile the fence nicely?
a pic would be fantastic.

[Thomas Allan Palmer]

See attached picture of 3 versions:

1. Complex Wall Profile
2. Object Made from Complex Wall Profile
3. Surface Texture made from Object.

For the surface you need to create a image that is the correct size for repeating intervals. If you change the height you will need to made a new texture to map.

PS. For the surface version the posts are real ArchiCAD post.