Tricks for shortening render times for animation as much as possible?

Flortale

I want to do animations with IRAY renders, but I average about 20-40 minutes per IRAY single frame render.  All I want is very short looping animations that are anywhere from 2 to 9 seconds long.  What are my options?

nonesuch00

1) If possible anything that is moving in the scene try to have it not cast shadows on any static objects one in the scene.

2) Then render the background only once.

3) Reduce the resolution to SD (1280x720) and render each moving character/object seperately. Repeat for each moving character/object. You'll probably want to render image sequences not an animation using DAZ Studio. You'll then need program that can create animation from those images & there you should use Blender (Blender.org)

4) Composite every animation/image sequence created in 3 onto the static background created in 2. 

5) Add sound.

6) Done.

Use Blender to do the compositing and sound editing as it is free. DAZ can't do those. Blender can. Search YouTube.