> Hi, I'm new to POV-Ray, so I've studied some works of the more experienced
> artists out there. Some scenes of their works are quite complex and therefore,
> they render very slow.
>
> Now, I wonder how the modelling of such a complex scene is done; How is it
> possible to model a complex scene, if the rendering gets extremely slow? Since
> it becomes impossible at a certain point to keep all the things in mind in a
> complex scene, the rendering of that scene (or parts of it) is the only way to
> check what's going on, isn't it?
>
> As far as I understand, it doesn't make any sense to wait a whole day for
> rendering, just to check if a small object sits in the right place - after
> spending one week in advance to find the proper camera-position to see whats
> going on with that object ...
>
> So, what's the story here?
>
>
>

Those slow rendering scenes are the final product.
During devlopment, the scene gets lots of symplifications:

Complexe, often layered, textures can be replaced by simple pigments.
Some transparent and reflective objects are made opaque and non-reflective.
No use of antialiasing, area light, focal blur, or radiosity.
General, croase, radiosity settings using only plain white or other 
solid pigments and temporary removal of transparent objects.
Temporary removal, by comenting out, of several objects while working in 
a specific area.
Using test scenes to create some complexe objects without anything else.
Use of simple place holders when setting medias.

All this can combine to change a few days final render into a few hours, 
or even minutes, test render.

Also, you can render only a small part of the visible scene. Using the 
windows version, you can sellect an arbitrary area of the preview window 
and render only that part.
It can also be set using command line parameters.

Then, there are the quality options that can be set with +qn where "n" 
is an integer in the 0~9 range.
+q0 remove all lights and only use full ambient illumination using only 
pigments.

Post a reply to this message