"Samuel B." <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Chris R" <car### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> > The final render was done at 1920x1080 with aggressive anti-aliasing and
> > radiosity.  It took 124 hours on my laptop.  The vast majority of that time was
> > spent on the aquarium itself, which is understandable given reflective surface
> > of the water and the aquarium glass.
> >
> > -- Chris R.
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> It looks great! Very nice modeling and lighting all around.
>
> It reminds of the time my dad had some Cichlids. They made babies, but all the
> juveniles swam into the gravel and died -_- That was after after a plexiglass
> partition was installed to keep the father from 'eating' the children. But now,
> I'm wondering if we actually kept the father from mouthbrooding?
>
> How is the fish net modeled? And is that a rosary vine on the left? (We have one
> in our house, and it's been making a run for the door for some time now. It's
> got to be at least 16+ feet long at this point...)
>
> That render time is... really high :S I don't know how you have the patience for
> it. (I suppose I could use my laptop too, since it's relatively quiet, but also
> a bit old.) Do you ever find yourself using the +q command line option for
> previews?
>
> I'm always trying to find ways to reduce render times, but my 'solutions' often
> result in unnecessary complications or worse quality... There's only so far you
> can cut down on trace depth, radiosity, antialising and such, before everything
> begins to get worse ( `._ .)
>
> Sam
The plant is intended to be a "Satin Pothos".  I had modeled it for another
scene a while back and just reused it by adding another vine and redoing the
splines that define its path.

As for rendering time, I have gotten used to a workflow where when I'm finally
done with the modeling, textures, and lighting I just let the rendering begin
and hope there aren't any pathological pixels that never finish.  Usually I'll
start it before the weekend, better on a long weekend, and just let it run.

For really long renders, longer than a weekend, I'll start another scene in
another instance of POV-Ray and just let it go in the background, or I'll pause
the render if its interfering with something else I'm doing and resume it later.

While I'm working on a scene, I break almost everything out into its own .inc
file and I have other standard .inc files that I use to set up test renders with
grid lines, axes, lighting, and a camera for test purposes.  I run the tests so
they can complete quickly while I'm doing modeling.

BTW:  I have access to some really big linux servers with 64 cores.  I have a
rendering going on one of those machines, using up most of those cores, that has
been going since early July.  It's 88% done now...



-- Chris R.

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