Slime wrote:

> First, I set the resolution to 320 x 240 (or 160 x 120 if it's really slow)
> and turn off anything that's unnecessary for testing the effect (including
> AA and other objects in the scene which may take up lots of parsing or
> render time). Then I'll one or both of the following:
> 
> A) I'll render it *without* whatever's making it slow, then hold shift and
> select (click & drag) the part of the image that I want to test, and then
> rerender so that only the important part of the image is rendered.
> 
> B) I add +SP64 to the command line. This gives a quick mosiac preview, which
> usually gives me a good idea of what's going on in the picture.
> 
> With really heavy stuff, it can still take a minute or so to view, but I've
> never really had to deal with unbearably long render times.
> 


Good advice.  I usually do all of the above, and will render a 
decent-sized image with all the slow options while I'm sleeping or at 
work and judge the results when I come back to the computer.

Build your scenes with a bunch of #declares at the top so it's easily 
changeable, such as:

#declare Photons = off;
#declare Radiosity = 1;  // 0 = off, 1 = fast, 2 = Whoa!!!
#declare Boring_Textures = on;
#declare Focal_Blur = off;

and then enclose the affected portions of the scene in an #if statement, 
like this:

#if( Boring_Textures )
    #declare My_Texture = texture{ pigment{ color rgb < 1, 0, 0 > }}
#else
    #declare My_texture = ...
#end

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   videotron.ca  */}camera{location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a orthographic}

Post a reply to this message