Alan Corey wrote:
> 
> On 19 Nov 1997, Nieminen Mika wrote:
> 
> You can make use of #declare and #ifdef to easily switch your scene from
> a quick mode to render while you're working on it to a more complete one
> for something like an overnight render.  Refraction is really slow and I
> do a lot of stuff with glass.  Put your simple preview declarations in a
> section that gets activated if a certain symbol is defined ("fast" in my
> example below) and the real ones in a section that gets called if the
> symbol isn't defined.

> That's probably enough to give the idea.  I use a 486DX2-66 with 24 megs
> and 256K cache myself.  Mostly I use shortcuts like those above and work
> in 320x200 mode.  When I get things about the way I want them I start a
> 640x480 AA render and go to bed or to work.  6 hours or more isn't
> uncommon for that machine.  You can also build a cache of files to be
> rendered unattended sometime like overnight if you're working on several
> things at once.

I also have a 486 with 24 megs ram and 256k cache.  I did all of the
above, but also I would generally do my test renders in 160x100.  Still,
it could take 30 mins or so for a scene, but there just wasn't any way
around it.  But, I use a lot of atmospherics, and we all know how slow
they are.  I had one other trick up my sleeve though.  I would use a
shell internet account at night when almost no one else was logged on.

One trick I had to speed up rendering was instead of useing procedural
textures, I used image maps.  I got those image maps by putting the
camera right above a plane with the procedural texture I wanted, and
then rendering it at a high res.  It help a bit, unless your real hold
up is atmospherics.

In the end, you probably will need to just break down and buy a new
machine.  A pentium 200 mmx MB, chip, and 32 megs of ram will only cost
you about US$300.  I bought a whole new computer pent 200 mmx, 32 megs
ram, 12x cd-rom, SB AWE64, 4 meg video card for a hair over US$800.  I
reused my old 2.5 gig hd and network card and off I went.

And finnally look at it this way, at least you aren't using a 386sx with
no fpu like I started out on.  I had problems trying to get a text
editor to load my 2 meg .pov files, let alone rendering, which
frequently would take all night at a test resolution.  Large files could
take days.

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