Hi guys

I am having some problems with some of my scenes taking absurdly long to
render (months). I suspect this is mostly due to stupid / inexperienced
scene design (I am new to Pov).

My question: how do you ppl optimise offscreen objects / meshes? I. e. parts
of your scene that are not in the camera field of view - a plane I suppose
would make no difference, but what about complicated isosurfaces and so
forth extending "around" the camera? Even just a bit?

For example, is there any advantage to differencing an isosurface when it
goes "offscreen" to prevent calculations being done for the missing piece,
or is this in fact precisely the wrong thing to do?

As far as I can reason out, POV does take "offscreen" stuff in account since
you can for example see reflections of offscreen objects onscreen (i. e. in
the camera's viewfield).

I am aware that I could precisely size stuff to fit exactly in the camera
viewfield, but my specific problem is that I need a certain "part" of an
isosurface and I do not have the mathematical ability to isolate only that
part, for example. So I translate it until I have the "part" I want in the
camera's viewfield. The isosurface is not much bigger than the camera's
view angle (say about two units in its "flat" (screen plane) axis).

Or is this exactly the wrong approach?

My problem is that I see incredible scenes all the time that take literally
thousands of times less time than my uncomplicated scenes and I would
desperately like to optimise my  trace times.

Thanks!
-- 
Stefan Viljoen
Software Support Technician
Polar Design Solutions

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