> Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>> It occurred to me there may be a non-zero probability of being able to
>> upload the module via my phone.  I'll try that later; however, even if I
>> succeed, I won't be able to post a notice to the newsgroups until I get
>> home Internet back.
> 
> Somehow, I am able to post via the Web interface (from someone else's computer),
> whereas I couldn't do it before the hurricanes.
> 
> But I've run into a new snag: when I add soft shadows and depth of field, the
> scene takes forever to render.  Based on the render time of the thumbnail, I
> estimate that a full-sized render would take 46 hours on my system.  But I would
> really like, at least, depth of field with the small scale of the subject
> matter.

Can't help for the depth of field, but, for the soft shadows, I can.
You really need to use the adaptive option with as small a value as you 
can get away with. If you can use adaptive 0 without causing artefacts, 
do it. Hint : ALWAYS start with adaptive 0 for your area_light. Only use 
a larger value if you get artefacts such as illuminated spots into 
shadow or dark spots into illuminated areas.
Even better, if you can somehow hide those, do it.
Adaptive let you use very dense arrays for your area_light at a very 
small render time cost.
area_light x,y, 257, 257 adaptive 0
is almost as fast as
area_light x,y 4 4 jitter
for a much smoother result.

> 
> Ordinarily, a 46 hour render would take a mere 46 hours, or a bit longer if I
> 'nice' the render so the computer is usable for other tasks during that period.
> But while my power source is a part time generator, I would have to attend the
> computer during the entire render, and bring the system in and out of
> hibernation as the generator is powered down and up, and as I leave the house
> and return.  That would extend the *elapsed* time to a nerve-wracking 2 or 3
> weeks--if the hibernation process doesn't fail, which it does frequently.  So
> this release will have to wait until I'm plugged into the grid.

Use the +c option to continue an interrupted render.
If you use photons, be sure to save them to a file that you can reload 
when resuming your render.
Add:
    #if(file_exists ("myphotons.phot"))
    load_file "myphotons.phot"
    #else
    save_file "myphotons.phot"
    #end
in your photons block.
This allow you to bypass the photons shooting phase.

You can do the same for radiosity data, but you need to use some command 
line options.

> 
> In the meantime, I'm exploring reducing max_trace_level and dispersion_samples.
> The latter looks promising; the former does not.
> 
> 

You may also increase adc_bailout to something around 0.01 or maybe 
slightly more. Just don't overdo it.

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