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How many iterations?

wmiller314wmiller314 Posts: 184
edited May 2020 in The Commons

Starting this thread to find out how many iterations most artists do. I just upgraded my computer and I can now actually finish a 5000 iteration render in something like an hour and a half, but I'm finding that on many of my renders, 5k is too much. I usually stop my renders around 2k and they look good to me. 

 

So how many iterations do you usually do? Leave a sample and hardware specs, please!

Looking forward to seeing all your responses.

I'm on a Ryzen 7 with a RTX 2070 Super and 32g of ram. I rendered out this single figure in less than 20 minutes with just over 2k iterations. 

Karen in Glasses 001.png
1440 x 2560 - 4M
Post edited by Chohole on

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,056
    edited May 2020

    LOL 20

    with denoiser cutting in at 20

    can render animations reasonably fast on my very humble Ryzen3 with 8GB of RAM and a 6GB 980ti card blush

    oh and set path length to 24, it's enough, don't need infinite rays bouncing and converging for my doodles 

     

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,843

    depends on the lighting. I never use the denoiser since it decreases sharpness, so sometimes I have to let it run to get rid of grainyness in dark shadow areas or highly reflective areas..

  • MelissaGTMelissaGT Posts: 2,611

    I don't so much count iterations. When it looks done, it's done. 

  • rrwardrrward Posts: 556

    Test renders go to 500 to see what the lights are going to be. Final renders usually top out at 2000, sometimes 2500, depending on how the light interacts with teh hair (the hair is usually the problem area in a render for me) and then I pas it through the Intel denoiser.

  • BobvanBobvan Posts: 2,653
    edited May 2020
    melissastjames said:

    I don't so much count iterations. When it looks done, it's done. 

    Same here I set limits really high and decide when its acceptable. Habit I got into from lux rendering days..

     

    Post edited by Bobvan on
  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805

    I use RenderQueue and run my renders overnight. With a 1080ti and 2070 I can just let renders run to 15k iterations and it is almost always fine. 

    For less powerful hardware I'd let renders run to some where around 5k without the denoiser or around 1k with it.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,722

    How high is the resolution on that render? If it's still taking 20 minutes using a nVidia RTX 2070 with just the model you have there I think I'll save my $500 and keep on CPU rendering.

    I used to cut off at 2000 CPU rendered with my 8 year old intel laptop but now with my 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 2700 I let it render to 5000 and let it run overnight. That's only at FHD (1920x1080) or 1920x1920 resolution though. I also only set render quality to 1.0 and converge at 95%.

  • DripDrip Posts: 1,237

    I don't care about the amount of iterations, but simply let my renders run until the render reaches an acceptable level of convergence. Quite often, I set it as high as 99.5%, though I know some people pull their renders as early as 60% and use an external denoiser or size down their render. When it takes longer than I like, I simply eyeball the result, and might decide to pull it earlier or cancel and scrap the render.

    The total amount of iterations heavily depends on the lighting and complexity of the scene, so there's really no good way to say how many iterations people should take. It's something you'll have to learn to guestimate through experience. Or simply be lazy, like me, and set the iterations to maximum while letting the render automatically stop at the desired convergence rate.

  • MescalinoMescalino Posts: 436
    Drip said:

    I don't care about the amount of iterations, but simply let my renders run until the render reaches an acceptable level of convergence. Quite often, I set it as high as 99.5%, though I know some people pull their renders as early as 60% and use an external denoiser or size down their render. When it takes longer than I like, I simply eyeball the result, and might decide to pull it earlier or cancel and scrap the render.

    The total amount of iterations heavily depends on the lighting and complexity of the scene, so there's really no good way to say how many iterations people should take. It's something you'll have to learn to guestimate through experience. Or simply be lazy, like me, and set the iterations to maximum while letting the render automatically stop at the desired convergence rate.

    Exactly this.

    Usually i setup a render then before i go to bed i set the itterations to 15000 and the time to 36000 and the convergence to 99%
    Then when i wake up and had my shower I look at the result. Sometimes its done and sometimes its still running. Then i simply eyeball the result and let it finish, stop and save it or scrap it.

     

  • SevrinSevrin Posts: 6,313

    It depends!

  • MelissaGTMelissaGT Posts: 2,611

    Even if I let a render run to 97%, I usually never see more than 2500 or so iterations. I can't imagine letting something run to 15,000 iterations...that would be like...next Tuesday? 

  • SevrinSevrin Posts: 6,313

    The number of iterations, by itself, doesn't mean a lot.

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805
    melissastjames said:

    Even if I let a render run to 97%, I usually never see more than 2500 or so iterations. I can't imagine letting something run to 15,000 iterations...that would be like...next Tuesday? 

    For me it can be around 30 minutes and as high as several hours.

  • alex86firealex86fire Posts: 1,130

    From what I noticed the more sources of light you have in the scene, the higher number of iterations is needed for the render to look good. Also, each iteration is slower.

    Also, with lower lighting, a higher number of iterations is needed.

    I have the same setup with Ryzen  7 and 2070 Super, 32 gb of ram. And I can do a render for a QHD resolution anywhere from 20-30 minutes to 8 hours, depending on the lighting in the scene.

    I never really look at number of iterations as it's irrelevant. Convergence is important and the overall look of the image.

    Usually for evening or night lit scenes I set a high convergence of 98% or above and leave it over night.

    Just for an example, same scene, day light or night lights, the difference in time was hours and same in renders. I did this a while back so can't rember exactly but I believe something like 10 minutes for the day one and 2 hours for the night one. Iterations maybe 2k for day one and 8k for night one.

    entry_evening.png
    2560 x 1440 - 5M
    entry_morning.png
    2560 x 1440 - 6M
  • wmiller314wmiller314 Posts: 184

    I'm happy to see so many people saying they stop it when it looks "done". I have been watching my renders and thinking that they look good to me around 40 or 60% but I never stopped it because I was afraid everyone was seeing something I don't so I'd just let them run, sometimes overnight. The end product never looked better than the 40% product. Haha. Now I know I can just hit stop when I feel like the canvase has reached a place I like. Thanks all.

     

    @nonesuch00 That canvase is 1440 in size and to be honest,I probably could have stopped it at about 15 or 20%. It looked fine.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    As many as it needs to get the result YOU (and no one else) wants; note that there is deminishing returns affect in place.

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