Need tips for reducing raytrace time and computer usabilty

[DBCC-pinky]

I'm looking to see if anyone has some tips on how to reduce raytrace and rendering time. I work mostly with remodels and at times it's an entire house project and creating the renderings can start to take 30-45+ for 10 passes with lights and mirrors and reflections on windows.   I have thought about upgrading my computer.  What processor seem to work the best for reducing the time for running raytracing?   Or, is anyone running it on a server with multi core Xeon that has significant reductions in ray trace time?

 

Thanks

[rittsdoneright]

Quote

 

Following because I'm also in the market for a new computer and it's frustrating waiting an hour for a raytrace.

[DRAWZILLA]

my tip would be to turn off all your lights in the plan and use light sources instead. I can generate decent ray-traces in just a couple of minutes. Light sources are just like light's but don't show like a fixture does..

[TheKitchenAbode]

Don't use point lights, even 1 point light will significantly slow things down. Turn off all lights in the plan that are not directly needed for the scene. Compute Caustics will slow things down as will using Environmental Lighting. Set your pic size to only what is necessary, double the width & height will increase your Ray Trace time 4 fold.

 

If you are buying a new computer for Ray tracing then you need as fast a processor with as many cores that you can afford. 

 

[rittsdoneright]

I have tried turning all lights off and reducing sunlight to 8% but it seems especially in kitchens that my stainless steel looks black and shadowed for a long time as well as the countertop stays pretty shadowed.

[TheKitchenAbode]

If you are using a stainless steel then it needs a highly scattered type of light for it to Ray Trace properly. A point light will do this but then your Ray Trace times will suffer. Configure some spots to provide this effect and all will be good.

 

Here's a scene I just ran. It has about 60 active spot lights and only took 5 minutes to run 25 passes, that's 12 seconds per pass. The wine fridge, stove and hood use the polished steel from the library.

[DRAWZILLA]

If you can get the metals catalog in the bonus section, get it , it has some nice stainless materials. 

[rittsdoneright]

Is the metals catalog in the 3D library? Because I'm not finding it in there.

[TheKitchenAbode]

There are metals in the main library under materials and in the bonus libraries providing you have downloaded them.

[rittsdoneright]

2 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

There are metals in the main library under materials and in the bonus libraries providing you have downloaded them.

Oh yes I have all those, I thought maybe there were extra ones that could be downloaded in the 3d library on chiefarchitect.com

 

Thank you!

[TheKitchenAbode]

4 minutes ago, rittsdoneright said:

Oh yes I have all those, I thought maybe there were extra ones that could be downloaded in the 3d library on chiefarchitect.com

 

Thank you!

 

There are also some metals in some of the manufacturer libraries such as Kohler, Formica and Wilsonart. They will all render quite well given the right lighting and with some tweaks to the material properties.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Here is an example of the stainless steel materials in the bonus library.

 

The metals (left to right) are in the same order as the library (top to bottom).

 

This one is with their material properties as per their standard settings.

 

This one is after tweaking the material properties.

 

The lighting for both are exactly the same, differences are due only to changes in the material properties. Also, the camera angle will make a difference in their appearance. Here is the second one at a different angle.

[rittsdoneright]

1 minute ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Here is an example of the stainless steel materials in the bonus library.

 

The metals (left to right) are in the same order as the library (top to bottom).

 

Thank you that helped a lot! I will try tweaking their properties and switching angles!

[rittsdoneright]

So this is 15 passes with no lighting except for a window in there. This isn't the kitchen I was attempting but this is a random one I tried ray tracing and it seems even when I let it go to 30-100 passes it looks the same the entire time.

 

There's got to be something I'm doing wrong but still cant figure it out.

[TheKitchenAbode]

You need some form of ambient light in that room. Though it will slow down your Ray Trace time place a 3D point light in the shower, set it at about 48" vertical at an intensity of say 10%. The other option is to use a ceiling recessed spot light in the shower and set the cut off angle to something very wide, say 140 degrees, this method will keep your Ray Trace times fast.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Here is an example of the challenge when there is no ambient lighting system.

 

This uses only recessed ceiling spot lights. Notice that the stainless steel that is not within the cut off angle is jet black. Here my cut off angle is 110 degrees, it would be even worse with a lower cut off angle.

 

This is the same scene but with the addition of some ambient lighting. As you can see the dark areas are gone.

 

 

[rittsdoneright]

Its a Tad better, I will mess around with that info. Thank you!!

[TheKitchenAbode]

8 minutes ago, rittsdoneright said:

Its a Tad better, I will mess around with that info. Thank you!!

 

For lights being used for ambient control you must turn off shadows. You may also need to add an ambient light in the area outside of the shower.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Here's an extreme example.

 

Same as my other post but I have changed the cut off angle of the recessed spots to 60 degrees. Now the fridges are outside of the cut off angle and they are completely black.

 

Turn on my ambient light system and things improve dramatically.

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

My stainless was looking a bit bland so I tweaked the material properties and made some minor adjustments to the Ray Trace Image Properties to punch it up. Here's a recap.

 

Recessed lights only 60 degrees

 

Recessed lights 60 degrees plus Ambient light system

 

Recessed lights 60 degrees plus Ambient light system plus Material tweaks and Image Properties Adjustments

 

 

 

[Michael_Gia]

20 hours ago, rittsdoneright said:

Its a Tad better, I will mess around with that info. Thank you!!

Looks like you're not using photon mapping. You need to for any stainless steel to not appear black. 

Turn on in the "Advanced" tab of Ray Trace Options. 

 

I personally have gone back to render mode only. I love the live view updates of all images in the plan. They update dynamically. I set and forget. They look good enough in a PDF or printed.

Of course, as a builder this is good enough for me and my clients. 

[DavidJPotter]

The entire point of a Ray Trace is QUALITY, not speed. Things like lighting make the largest savings of time to ray trace, settings like photon mapping etc increase reality but take a bit longer. If you want speed use the Standard Render camera only, if you require quality then Ray Trace. The only other thing that can reduce the time in Ray Tracing is a fast CPU with lots of cores to it.

 

DJP

[rittsdoneright]

1 hour ago, DavidJPotter said:

The entire point of a Ray Trace is QUALITY, not speed. Things like lighting make the largest savings of time to ray trace, settings like photon mapping etc increase reality but take a bit longer. If you want speed use the Standard Render camera only, if you require quality then Ray Trace. The only other thing that can reduce the time in Ray Tracing is a fast CPU with lots of cores to it.

 

DJP

I don't really want to use the ray trace option for everything. I work for a builder and majority of our clients are happy to just see the render, but for instances like Facebook advertising or our website I would like to have a couple really nice ray traces.. But I do understand where your coming from saying they take time, I just didn't figure they would take over an hour. I think I just need to keep adjusting settings. Thank you.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Ray Traces do not have to take hours to get a decent scene. The shower sample you posted would not look really any better if you ran it for 10 days. Multiple passes will not correct for lighting issues or incorrect material properties, it just Ray Traces what you give it. If you don't like what you see after say 10 passes then it's time to go back and make some adjustments. Multiple passes only smooth's things out, reduces noise and refines some of those details, unfortunately it is not an auto correct function.

 

This example took about 40 sec per pass and is good to go after about 25 passes.

 

Also, Ray Trace tend to come out a bit on the soft side so consider using a photo editor to add some sharpening and a few other colour/contrast adjustments.

[Michael_Gia]

55 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Ray Traces do not have to take hours to get a decent scene. The shower sample you posted would not look really any better if you ran it for 10 days. Multiple passes will not correct for lighting issues or incorrect material properties, it just Ray Traces what you give it. If you don't like what you see after say 10 passes then it's time to go back and make some adjustments. Multiple passes only smooth's things out, reduces noise and refines some of those details, unfortunately it is not an auto correct function.

 

This example took about 40 sec per pass and is good to go after about 25 passes.

 

Also, Ray Trace tend to come out a bit on the soft side so consider using a photo editor to add some sharpening and a few other colour/contrast adjustments.

Hi Kitchen Abode guy. 

I know you've given out your settings multiple times in the past but could you please list the settings you used for this Raytrace please?