Tips for improving render times?

[Andrew March]

This has probably been asked before but I couldn't find anything.

I recently had to stop a render because, well quite simply it had been rendering for 27 hours and had only got about half way through rendering

What I am looking for are some general tips to increase render speed without compromising too heavily on quality, now i know it's going to depend greatly on the scene, so let's say it's an above the clouds shot at 1920 x 800 and is simply a basic cumulus cloud setup with a low elevation sun and a basic terrain just to show some ground through the gaps in the clouds.

If anyone has any tips it would be greatly appreciated, having just purchased TG2 and loving the results that can be produced I just have to figure out whether or not I can actually use it in my workflow or have I bought a turkey.

Running quad core 2.6ghz, 4Gb ram, on windows Vista home premium.

Thanks in advance.

[Tangled-Universe]

Welcome to the gang Andrew

I strongly recommend to read this:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0

Besides that, could you post the settings you've used for rendering this particular image?
Even better, the .tgd-file?
Given your machine's specs I'm thinking you made a mistake somewhere.

Cheers,
Martin

[Andrew March]

Hey man, thanks for the quick response.

I'm having a read of that thread now to see if I can improve a few things.

Cheers

Andrew

[Oshyan]

Knowing what your render settings were on this render is really essential to giving good advice. I agree in general with Martin, a machine like yours shouldn't generally result in render times that long.

- Oshyan