Hothead Hair - Absurd Rendering Times?

edited December 1969 in The Commons

I'm doing some fairly simple renders (1 figure, not a lot of lights) with the Hothead Hair (for V3, adapted to V4) and am ending up with some _absurd_ rendering times -- half-a-day-type times, or more.

Nothing special going on, just Poser preset final renders. Fairly new PC that renders most things fine in Poser 7.

Here's the product. I figured being for V3, it'd probably be fairly "simple" -- meaning no big render times or similar flak.

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/hothead-a-v3-fantasy-hairstyle/

Anyone having similar problems?

Anyone figured out a way to solve them?

I'm thinking I need a new hair for this model, though Hothead looks pretty cool. :-/

Thoughts? Wisdom?

Thanks!

Comments

  • Velvet GoblinVelvet Goblin Posts: 532
    edited December 1969

    Transmapped hair can really add to render time. I usually make sure "visible in raytracing" is unchecked during test renders, and then turn it on for the final render.

    How long it takes depends very much on your CPU and your render settings. You may be rendering at quality settings that are higher than you need.

  • edited December 1969

    Transmapped hair can really add to render time. I usually make sure "visible in raytracing" is unchecked during test renders, and then turn it on for the final render.

    How long it takes depends very much on your CPU and your render settings. You may be rendering at quality settings that are higher than you need.

    Possibly higher than I need. But with a background in print, I usually end up doing at least one 300dpi 8x10" or so render -- in case I want to print it later.

    But I can certainly turn off the ray-trace function for some and see if that works/helps.

    Last render finished overnight (started sometime yesterday afternoon), so I may be done with that shot for now. And maybe the hair as well. Definitely can't use it for more complicated renders, unless it looks okay with no raytrace.

    Or unless someone comes up with a suggestion not mentioned so far.

    Thanks!

  • Velvet GoblinVelvet Goblin Posts: 532
    edited July 2012

    By quality, I didn't mean resolution.

    If your min shading rate is very low, for instance, or your pixel samples too high, or you have more RT bounces than you need, you can significantly increase render times without seeing any noticeable difference in end results, even at high resolutions.

    The reason I say this is that you said you use Poser render presets, and the final quality settings for preset might be a bit of overkill. Best to test your settings until you find ones that work for the level of quality you need, and then use them, rather than presets, which are not tailored to your particular needs or your particular scene.

    The final quality preset has a min shading rate of 0.10. You can change this number just on all the hair parts, perhaps to 0.5. That might also lower your render times.

    Post edited by Velvet Goblin on
  • ArienArien Posts: 195
    edited December 1969

    Suggestion: check the material settings. It is *possible* that it has ambient colour to create the firey effect, it's not unheard of. If you're using IDL and P8+, the Ambient colour on the hair might act as a light emitter of sorts, contributing to the long render times.

  • edited December 1969

    By quality, I didn't mean resolution.

    If your min shading rate is very low, for instance, or your pixel samples too high, or you have more RT bounces than you need, you can significantly increase render times without seeing any noticeable difference in end results, even at high resolutions.

    The reason I say this is that you said you use Poser render presets, and the final quality settings for preset might be a bit of overkill. Best to test your settings until you find ones that work for the level of quality you need, and then use them, rather than presets, which are not tailored to your particular needs or your particular scene.

    The final quality preset has a min shading rate of 0.10. You can change this number just on all the hair parts, perhaps to 0.5. That might also lower your render times.

    That's entirely likely. I don't know as much about the rendering functions as I should. Too jammed up usually with work to play with them much.

    I have noticed sometimes that final render isn't much different from a pre-set with the shadows & basic ray trace turned on.

    And for the other commentor, I'm using P7 -- so anything after that is unlikely -- but as I just said, I'm not a power-user on renders and that kind of thing.

    More than a hobbyist, but....

  • edited December 1969

    If you're interested, you can find the render in question on my Facebook Page, here:

    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151084841860953&set=a.10151084274835953.483544.110719720952&type=3

    In this light, the hair looks yellow. (In the other render with the red sky, it's orange & black.) You can find that in the same album.

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