Give me times to compare

[posodrac]

I have a new computer - (Intel Dual Core i3 530 2.93Ghz Skt1156 4Mb) But still not acquired the license
Can someone give me an estimated time for each passage for a 800x600 scene like the only one I posted on Gallery section (pentium 4, 200 passages in about 6 hours) with 11. preset, 4 threads, for this new configuration.
By my calculations the reder will take + - 3 hours for same nº passages.
Is it me or it's too long? Can anyone enlight me?

[Fletch]

This thread may have an example computer similar in setup to yours, and as you read it, you will see that even identical-looking setups can give different render times... so it would be pretty much impossible for anyone to predict your times. I have a corei7 - 8 threads (virtually hyperthreaded) and it renders rather quickly. I do not know about your particular machine. When you get your license, you will be able to benchmark properly against others in that thread.

# of Passes is not to actually be thought of much... when rendering with 1 or 16 threads you will see it render 1 pass. but with 16 threads, it actually just ran 16 passes... but will only say "1". It's really a matter of reaching the level of clarity you desire. Unbiased (progressive) renderings take a while in any unbiased rendering application. 3 hours is a very reasonable time for anyone with great experience in this type of render method. Sure it's much longer than say a 1minute raytrace. But then, raytracing is possible with Twilight, if you desire... and Twilight's raytracing engine is faster than others I've used that cost $4000, and you get to use real looking glass and metals.

[beckdan]

Fletch: I am also using an i7 with 8 threads and want to learn more about what u meant by "virtual hyperthreading".
i just bought this new computer (i7, windows 7 64 bit, 12 GB ram, 2x1TB HD) specially to be able to render faster in twilight and have a hunch i could be getting faster renderings if i knew how to tweak the system. i am rendering animations with 100's of frames, and need it good quality and some of the animations are taking 6 days to render! I wouldnt mind it taking so long if at would at least do it in the background and let me get on with other work, but sketchup is eating up 100% of the cpu while twilight is rendering. please teach me more about virtual hyperthreading and what else i should now about getting maximum speed....
thanks

[Fletch]

Twilight renders in "low priority" mode by default, (otherwise you would have difficulty even working in SU while Twilight was rendering on all threads) You can choose number of threads to be 7 in the advanced tab, and see if that helps your performance abilities, but basically it's like loosing an entire computer, so... it's up to you. The progressive render methods seem to be a bit more "friendly" to the performance of the machine while rendering in low priority mode in comparison to Easy1-7 for instance. I can not say why this is.

To increase speed of animation renders there are some things to keep in mind.

Find lowest setting that works. This may require venturing out of the Easy folder.
AA does not need to be high for shots when the camera is moving faster than a "very slow" speed. So using a lower AA will help speed up your render times significantly. (but sacrifice quality of some specular sampling on things that have fuzzy reflection.)
Use lowest number of lights possible to get good looking image.
Use lowest number of Templates possible on materials. (one test scene I used took 34mins on 8 threads to render when all surfaces had a material template applied. But with flat SU basic materials the same scene renders in 1m)
Use the fastest rendering lights possible.
Use fake emit materials and lampshade library if possible for interiors to help speed up light render times.

Lighting a scene for rendering as an animation will be COMPLETELY different from lighting it for rendering with a progressive still hi-res image.

In my experience rendering animation (I've rendered a lot of them)
If a single frame takes longer than 7 mins, it's likely too long. Ideally less than 4 mins/frame is best.
Choosing the right FPS and right resolutionis ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL!!! This can NOT be overstated! If you get this wrong it can literally mean days or weeks of render time! If a client wants a HD video they need to pay the additional for the render time/ and you need to be aware of that!
Use the least number of frames possible to get your desired result. 15fps will work great for computer playback and web playback. 20fps is typically good enough for most of my clients (office buildings, churches, schools, apartment rentals, radio stations (see the manual for more info about suggested fps)

ps - when using a simple raytracer like viz it would take 2-5 mins per frame, and we would render on a farm of about 60 computers and render all night and all day to put together a video... so you should be aware that rendering animations will take more than 8 threads. Of those 60, only about a third were dual cores, probably 2 of them were quads.