Here's what I'm going with now. Any suggestions on how I can cut down my
render times?

//Radiosity settings. See section 2.3.7 in POV-Ray 3.6 manual for details
   radiosity {
              pretrace_start 0.08           // start pretrace at this size
              pretrace_end   0.05           // end pretrace at this size
              count 20                     // higher -> higher quality
(1..1600)
              nearest_count 1               // higher -> higher quality
(1..10)
              error_bound 1.8               // higher -> smoother, less
accurate [1.8]
              recursion_limit 1             // how much interreflections are
calculated (1..5+)
              low_error_factor .5           // reduce error_bound during
last pretrace step
              gray_threshold 0.0            // increase for weakening colors
(0..1)
              minimum_reuse 0.015           // reuse of old radiosity
samples [0.015]
              brightness 1                  // brightness of radiosity
effects (0..1)
              adc_bailout 0.01/2
             }

Post a reply to this message

Minimum_reuse could be increased to 0.1, or even 0.2.
For adc_bailout, you could use 1/64.

Note that these settings will degrade the quality of your image.

Also, I can't recommend using a count of 20, as the results will be 
quite splotchy.  However, increasing it will slow your render down, so 
that's not exactly what you're asking for here :)

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for the tips, Ben. I'll give them a whirl. I do get some blotchyness
on some textures regardless of what count setting I use, and I can fix that
in my photo app in one click anyway.

Frank

Ben Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> Minimum_reuse could be increased to 0.1, or even 0.2.
> For adc_bailout, you could use 1/64.
>
> Note that these settings will degrade the quality of your image.
>
> Also, I can't recommend using a count of 20, as the results will be
> quite splotchy.  However, increasing it will slow your render down, so
> that's not exactly what you're asking for here :)
>
> ...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

fls13 wrote:
> Thanks for the tips, Ben. I'll give them a whirl. I do get some blotchyness
> on some textures regardless of what count setting I use, and I can fix that
> in my photo app in one click anyway.
> 
> Frank

Just out of curiosity, what's the highest count setting you've used? 
Typically, I'll start at 100, and use at least 300 for high quality (but 
this can be highly scene dependant).  If you're using less than this, 
that could be the cause of the blotchiness.

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

> Just out of curiosity, what's the highest count setting you've used?
> Typically, I'll start at 100, and use at least 300 for high quality (but
> this can be highly scene dependant).  If you're using less than this,
> that could be the cause of the blotchiness.
>
> ...Chambers

200, I think, Ben. I don't know what it is, but I've essentially been doing
the
same scenes with higher quality settings, and my render times were 30-40
mins. Now they're consistently pushing an hour or longer. The lower
settings don't seem to hurt the quality any, and the blotchines came with
high settings on skin and light cloth textures. But they're always an easy
post fix and I'm no purist. :O)

Frank

Post a reply to this message