any tips to make Iray render faster?

Toobis

In animations and renders. What would be the most best thing to perhaps purchase for your computer to make Iray animations and renders quicker? is it mostly RAM?  (and yes I have NVidia obviously)

fixmypcmike

Video-card RAM determines how large a scene the card can handle, but as long as the scene fits it doesn't affect speed.  Number of CUDA cores is the more direct determinant of how long it takes to render.

AllenArt

Also, more brightly lit scenes render faster, as do scenes with less reflective or refractive surfaces or fewer shaders with SSS or displacement. If you're animating and want to use Iray to render, keep these things in mind. I'm sure more will chime in with more tips ;).

Laurie

mtl1

Aim for easily-converging scenes, which means less volumetric/refractive surfaces; less glossy effects; even as opposed to indirect/dramatic lighting; and less indoor scenes with small portals.

edit: Even more: Optimize your path length; use architectural/caustic samplers when appropriate.

edit2: I was actually going to create a blog containing technical data on what affects Iray renders, but work got in the way...

Kevin Sanderson

Toobis, watch this video. 

Oso3D

One of my motivations for developing procedural renders is to drastically reduce the texture load of the scene, which has a huge impact on Iray stuff.

So, for example, if you have a distant scene of characters, getting rid of texture maps helps immensely (even without specialized shaders).

 

 

nicstt

Basically, Cash.

... Lots of it.

3Diva

I find that scenes rendered with just the HDRI render much faster than scenes with added lighting sets. 

nonesuch00

Yes, HRDI and render at no more than 720P. If you like that resolution you can render at higher resolutions later. I find that 720P renders fast enough that I could actually CPU render a short animation in about a week which I will be excited to try in the future.