I am sure there have been many questions regarding this, so my apologies. I think my situation might be a little unique though. So my render time for a 200 frame animation is taking almost 24+ hours to render. This isn't even a finished project, rather a demo, so I hate to think what a finished project would take. Yes, I am a novice at 3ds max and learning as I go. I have read and watched so many tutorials that my head is spinning.
So quick background info, first the Supergirl model was a download, the inside of the cape was invisible in render, making it see-through. Only fix I found was to Shell Modify which unfortunately did so to entire model, making some things look a little funny. Any other suggested attempts to fix the cape prob resulted in the mesh separating it from the Bone rig, and I could not find a quick fix for this.
Second, the Particle smoke was not what I really wanted, but another tutorial I saw and liked for smoke did not work for some reason. I think these two elements in my animation are part of my slow render.
I am aware I have several lights in the scene as well, once again, all lighting tutorials and suggestions did not produce the right light. Actually removed two lights to try and help problem, not happy about that though.
I know there are several elements within my scene that are slowing it down. I just want to render the demo scenes I have created, mix then into a video to see if I like it and want to further pursue the project. Any suggestions on how to reduce my render time would be helpful. I have attached pics to scene and render setup.
Thank you everyone for your time.