xGen taking "centuries" to render

[samunawa]

Hi there. I have a scene which uses the xGen grass preset (which I've modified to my likings) and I don't understand why it takes such a long time to render. I'm starting to believe the problem lies with my hardware. I'm using Maya 2017 and rendering with Arnold. Below are my specifications:

CPU: ryzen1700x

GPU: vega 56 8GB

RAM: 16gb corsair vengeance lpx

Below is what's going on in my scene:

https://streamable.com/mdl2d - Full preview of my settings

What happens is that whenever I go to my Arnold IPR render, I believe xgen is preparing the render so my system hangs for a short while (the higher the density value the longer the system hang time) and then begins to render. Surely it doesn't take THAT long to render out grass? I've heard that it's due to my CPU not being support fully by Maya so could anyone suggest why this is? Or does xGen usually take this long to render?

[Anonymous]

Hi Samunawa,

When I render my objects that have a large area that is covered by Xgen, it generally takes 10-15 minutes to do something...  not sure what it is doing but when I remove that description and just have my other 2 small patches, the renderer happens within about 30 seconds. ( kind of like when you click on preview - slower the more you see in the view port)

I think that Xgen is generating the larger area of objects(grass) before it can render.  The larger the area the longer it takes.

I notices in your image that you posted in the preview/output area that you didn't set the renderer to Arnold.  It is set to none - I am not sure how this affects the overall render when this is not set to the correct renderer.

I use Vray and I when I set it to Vray, there is a caching option.  I have been trying to get the vrscene caching to work, but whenever I use the export vrscene cache Xgen crashes and hangs.  My thinking is that it'll write out the data that is "thinks" about above.  I am not sure if you can do this for Arnold, as I am on maya 2016.

I am frustrated with this as well.

C

[samunawa]

Hi. I was wondering that xgen should have a bake option but I was unable to find anything. But thank you for your suggestion