TheKitchenAbode

Here are three things I found that really impact upon the Raytrace run time.

1. Change all lights to "Spot Light", any other light type really slowed things down. Some fixtures have more than one bulb, make sure to get them all.

2. Check all material properties. Anything set at "Polished" had a negative impact. Change to "Reflective". Flooring, especially hardwood is often default polished, counter top materials, tiles, granite, marble etc.

3. Some materials properties are "User Defined", found this to be the case for a number of metal finishes. Change to "General Material", sometimes this had a positive effect. 

Just use the "Rainbow" material selector tool to call up the properties dialog box for the material you wish to check.

Even if the item is not within the camera view it still needs to be changed, especially the lights. If you do not wish to change all of the lights outside of the camera view then make sure they are turned off.

Graham

Here is the latest shower vid.

 

http://youtu.be/6GDzgw8o5Mc

 

Worthwhile watching.

Says video is currently being processed, not available.

You could try this, set the ceiling material to your wood plank. Create a shelf or soffit and apply this to the underside of the flat portion, make these materials the other ceiling finish. You may need to adjust their thickness to obscure the wood planks.

Graham

Very confusing,  I must REMAKE my shower vid.  Many many ways to skin a cat,  I think I have the best way to skin this cat......  but I am open to other methods.

I will checkout your shower vid, always open to alternative methods, that's the real power of Chief Architect as there are numerous ways to meet ones end objective.

Here's my philosophy. The glass shower surround and tile work are finishing elements that are applied (installed) after the walls are framed & clad. For the tile work the application will protrude beyond the wall substrate equivalent to the thickness of the tile & adhesive (thinset). Cladding the walls with a partition (or whatever does the trick) set to this thickness will accurately reflect this. One can then zoom in to address how the exposed tile edge is to be treated. Same for the glass, I can now see and adjust how the glass panel will intersect with the tile work, will the tiles extend beyond the glass or terminate against the glass inside the shower. Obviously everything depends upon the needs of the user and the required level of control and analysis one requires. For myself, I need to generate a visual of a design but also require a design that reflects as close as possible the construction process in order to anticipate potential issues & problems. Much better to resolve these in advance than on-site.

Graham

Don't make walls, instead create a "partition", size it accordingly, position in front of opening, change "material" to glass and set the transparency for the desired effect.

For the tile work within the shower do the same and clad the walls with partitions, set thickness to represent tile/adhesive thickness and then change the "material" to the desired tile. If the tile work requires for say a horizontal decorative inset then use three partitions stacked on top of each other sized height wise accordingly. You can now control the tile independently within each section. Just a note that dependent upon the partitions width to height ratio the tile orientation may not be correct, where this occurs just change the material orientation to suit, will need to make a copy of the material if the orientation for the same material varies between panels. If the default orientation is 0 degrees then set the copy to 90 degrees, apply the default or copy to the appropriate panel so the orientation is the same. 

Graham

Doug_Park is correct. There is a setting under "Edit" "Preferences" "Raytrace" that allows you to assign the number of dedicated processor cores to the Raytace process. You need to reduce this by at least one in order to free up some of your processor for other tasks.

Keep-in-mind that Raytrace is primarily dependent upon the main processor and not the graphics card. The "Render" settings relate to the camera views so changing these will not have any effect on Raytrace performance. They will however effect camera view performance which in turn is dependent upon the graphics card.

Graham