Epic wings - epic rendering time?

AdrianSAdrianS Posts: 77
edited December 1969 in New Users

I don't really know if help is possible on this one. I have a powerful machine and a top-end graphics card. (intel dual core i5-3570 @8GHz wth 8GB RAM). When rendering at top quality and quite large file sizes (ca. 3000 x 2000 pixels) the renders usually complete in a few minutes for a single figure, and very rarely have I had to wait more than an hour. The exception is when I use the epic wings accessory. I know certain things like hair can take a long time to render, and I'm sure epic wings is like that, but I recently tried rendering a single figure and even after 5 hours it was only 45% complete. I abandoned it as, if it was going to take that long, I decided it was best to use Reality so I could let it render in the background. Also, the resources used for the render meant that everything else on my computer slowed to a crawl. Reality normally takes a lot longer that 3Delight to produce good quality renders, but with epic wings Reality actually seems to be quicker, and the computer worked on other things at its normal speed.
I'm puzzled by this. I want to render 6 figures (separately) for a project and that could lock up my computer for days! Is there any trick that would allow me to speed up this render while still retaining quality? I tried reducing the pixel dimensions to ca 1200 x 750, but that didn't really make a huge difference.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,842
    edited December 1969

    The Epic Wings have several layers of transparency, and that' is what causes the slow down (as with hair) when using occlusion or ray-traced shadows. Swtiching the sahder to uberSurface and turning off ray-tracing and/or occlusion may help, as long as the results look acceptable.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    A: 3Delight doesn't use the Grahpics card for rendering and
    B: you failed to post what your render setting are and what lighting you are using.

    But for me 5 hours is nothing compared how long it takes on my machine. :)

  • AdrianSAdrianS Posts: 77
    edited December 1969

    I didn't give all the render settings and lighting because I thought the post was long enough without that. Basically all the settings were for the best quality and I understand that will increase rendering time. My issue was not really the time, it was the fact that my computer became almost unusable throughout that time.The rendering was using 100% of my CPU, so using things like Word, the Internet and Windows was so slow it was like being back in the 90's. I just could not see how a powerful CPU could be completely used up by a render! It also seemed odd how the system could cope well with everything else but not epic wings.
    I don't know if Reality uses the graphics card, but my solution has been to use Reality. I don't want to compromise on quality and Reality seems to cope much better than 3Delight. It still takes a long time to render but there is no noticeable slowdown with other applications.

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