Absurd render time!

[Anonymous]

I recently returned to modeling and created a 3D interior with Maya and Arnold. The problem is, the very long rendering time. I left the pc to work for one night and in 7 hours it only came to 16%! Ok, fullhd with high sampling and ray depht settings, but if I want a noise free image what can I do? Do I have to leave the PC turned on for 60 hours? Who will ask me what PC I have: Amd Ryzen 5 2600, 16 gb ram, Geforce 1060 etc. Ok, it's not a Xeon or Threadripper, but 30 years ago with an Amiga 4000 I rendered with Imagine 3d or Real 3d in 4/5 hours!

[jeanpierre.vangastel]

Lower the samples and denoise with noice on the cpu or optix on gpu would be my advice. https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Denoising

[lee_griggs]

Yes, it sounds like your sample settings are too high. Please, can you share your render settings, light samples and what is in the scene, etc? (instructions on the right side).

More information about sampling can be found here and here.

[madsd]

Random V-Ray scene converted to Arnold.
3000x1800 frame.
4 minutes render time.
1 skydome, no portals, no custom tweaking, no optimization.

I dont think 4 minutes for 3k is bad, on the contrary.

Im utilizing a denoiser from Declan Russel ( Arnold dev ) that I wrote a small tool for, it is much better than Optix and also works very well for animation.

gtx1080ti

Some other random V-Ray scene with textures and shaders missing ( not the point tho )

5000x3000 Render time 3 minutes.
1 skylight outside the building, no portals no tweaking.

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
SET "noice=C:\Denoiser\Denoiser.exe"
SET "MPath=D:\renders\03\"
SET "MName=wallz"
for /l %%i in (1,1,400) do (
set "frame=%%i"

if !frame! GEQ 100 set "lframe=0!frame!"
if !frame! LEQ 99 set "lframe=00!frame!"
if !frame! LEQ 9 set "lframe=000!frame!"

 start /WAIT %noice% -i %MPath%%MName%!lframe!.exr -o %MPath%%MName%_Denoised!lframe!.exr -a %MPath%%MName%_AOVs!lframe!.exr -n %MPath%%MName%_AOVs_1!lframe!.exr
)

And then you modify this, 400 is the cap of frames, and its not supported if you grab a frame range not starting from 0.

And denoiser is here ->
https://github.com/DeclanRussell/IntelOIDenoiser

And you need to print 3 files to disk pr frame.

- Main rendered image
- Albedo.exr
- Normal.exr

And you keep them in 2 AOV's, not the same.


--------------------------------

- 1920x1000
- Motion blur
- Skydome light
- direct light
- 15 lamps
- Scene volume shader with noise in density
- 90 seconds pr frame...!

[schwungsau]

it also depends on type scene, lights etc..

for example, if have no direct light in scene, only light coming from ground where the light is coming outside the scene. this case would super slow because a pathtracer has a hard time so find the light source. in special cases like, render method like bidirectional, pathguiding or light caches would help increase the speed (which arnold does not support). in this case you need do trickery and place portal lights on the ground.

[Anonymous]

Damnn how you get this stuff ccc.png looking so clean with only 1 skydome light? whats your diffuse ray depth number.

[madsd]

3 bounces on diffuse.

Also, its a court yard outside, so essentially a hole in the ground, with these doors open to court yard with overhanging wood things, you can kinda see them.

So, the V-Ray scene had all kinds of helpers going, area lights and stuff hanging outside in the court yard to help focus rays.

No need with Arnold in this case, that is for sure.

[Anonymous]

That's cool any other difference in settings, whats the exposure of the skydome light.

[madsd]

No special settings.
The skydome I usually set to 1 and 0. not 1 and 8. Then just handle the general exposure in the frame buffer.

[Anonymous]

Oh oh...cool I'll try something like that later...cuz I was trying to light an interior scene with a lot of objects in it and it was looking a bit unreal even with area lights in the windows and the skydome wasn't adding much

[madsd]

The image in the frame buffer probably needs to be adjusted a bit in your case. There may be too much contrast going, like for example exterior is completly overexposed and deep in the bulding you get absolute darkness. So you need to level that out.

[lee_griggs]

Please use Light portals with a Skydome light and not area lights.

[Anonymous]

No, I used area lights to compensate for darkness cuz I still used light portals, so using area lights in window spaces isn't correct except if I want volumetrics right?