rendering in simulate 2014

[bjavo]

Hi. 

I am using simulate 2014, and i am strugling a bit with rendering. 

I have made several animations using both the timeliner, animation scenes and viewpoints, but i cant find a recipe on how to make it work every time i hit play.  

In the 2012 version i used the OpenGL with great success. Not the best quality but it usually worked and didnt take to long. 

After installing simulate 2014 i have had trouble since day 1. The viewport "renderer" is the only option that actually works ok for me, but thats not really a renderer either. 

I have tried with the Autodesk renderer, wich i understand is the only option in 2015, but that cracks my memory before it has rendered ONE picture. The presenter seems to work but it takes 25 days to render the photos for a 40 sec animation. 

Can someone help me understand how to operate the Autodesk renderer? I guess ill have to start using it soon anyway so i might as well do it now. 

I just want a 720p resolution without any other special features. I have to run this on my laptop with i7 quad core and 32GB RAM. 

Id really appreciate it if someone could help me out here. 

thanks

[dgorsman]

Your render settings have a big effect on how long it takes to render an animation.  For example, you can quickly create a preview at 6 fps but that won't look good for the final product.  24 fps is the old broadcast standard and gives good results; very high quality HD can sometimes require 30 fps.  Lots of lights casting shadows, complex materials, and transparent objects can drastically increase rendering time as well.  For 40 seconds of animation at 24 fps, you are looking at nearly a thousand frames.  If each of those takes 30s (for an average quality frame) to render, then the entire sequence will take around 480 minutes, or around 8 hours.

It probably doesn't help that you are using a laptop.  They are designed for portability, not that level of abuse.