Settings concensus - what do you use?

[Markal]

O.K. ...here it is....
I usually render at 1200 X 900. 
Quality at .8 or .9. 
AA at 7,8 or 9 depending on number of objects and my patience.
GI detail and quality at 4
I usually leave GI surface details and supersample unchecked.
My render times have been averaging around 20 hours or so. I have an intel core 2 quad, 6Ghz ram, Vista 64 bit system.
I use PSP7 to JPEG the images and yes, I still postwork contrast and sharpening.
The TG2 renders do have a higher quality look than the old TG .9 but mine still seem a bit illustrated....I'm working on that.
Now....what settings do y'all use...(yes, y'all is a word used daily in the southern U.S. )
Merry Christmas and the best of New Years to y'all!
Mark

[choronr]

I can't say I have favorite settings; it depends on the image light and atmosphere. Also, the type of render filter is an important factor; from soft to sharp and in between - again, defendant upon light and atmosphere. Lately, I have been favoring the 1.6 aspect ratio setting in the rendering settings that seems to make an image more interesting to view. DOF certainly will be a popular setting to explore in the future.

I really don't have a specific range of settings - all depends on the image.

[Henry Blewer]

I usually render at 1280 x 960, detail 0.9, AA 8, and Ray trace Objects. I have atmosphere samples at 64 lately, cloud quality 1 highest detail. I use the haze density to soften things up a little.
All this is subject to change as I get used to 2.1.

[Hannes]

Of course it depends on the image. GI detail and quality set to 4 is really high and not necessary all the time. If you use plants a higher GI setting may be justified especially when they are in the shadow, but I found out that a higher athmosphere quality (samples) setting can make your plants look a lot better.

[schmeerlap]

Given your decent (more oomph than mine) hardwear spec I'm surprised your renders are taking that long. My render settings are similar to yours, except my GI Detail and Quality are 2 and 3 respectively. My similarly sized renders take between 45min and 5hrs depending on complexity of content (my hardwear spec is intel core 2 quad, 4Gb ram, Vista 64 system). I usually set Atmosphere samples anywhere between 32 and 64, and cloud quality between 1.5 and 2. I sometimes have Soft shadows checked, maybe it's your Soft shadows settings that are accounting for your time consuming renders. And when my computer is rendering an image I don't use the computer for any other tasks until the render is completed. Some TGers, I know, will multitask their computer while TG is still rendering, thus prolonging their render time.

John

[Tangled-Universe]

Of course it depends on the image. GI detail and quality set to 4 is really high and not necessary all the time. If you use plants a higher GI setting may be justified especially when they are in the shadow, but I found out that a higher athmosphere quality (samples) setting can make your plants look a lot better.

Yes absolutely. The shadows in the plants/trees tend to get noizy quite easily, so upping the atmosphere samples definitely helps.

I usually render my images with 64-96 atmo samples when it contains visible sky or clouds. My latest render "inside deep forest" had 256 atmo-samples and still some grain here and there
When I render images with terrain only and "close-up" like then 32 samples is really good enough for me.

Given your decent (more oomph than mine) hardwear spec I'm surprised your renders are taking that long. My render settings are similar to yours, except my GI Detail and Quality are 2 and 3 respectively. My similarly sized renders take between 45min and 5hrs depending on complexity of content (my hardwear spec is intel core 2 quad, 4Gb ram, Vista 64 system). I usually set Atmosphere samples anywhere between 32 and 64, and cloud quality between 1.5 and 2. I sometimes have Soft shadows checked, maybe it's your Soft shadows settings that are accounting for your time consuming renders. And when my computer is rendering an image I don't use the computer for any other tasks until the render is completed. Some TGers, I know, will multitask their computer while TG is still rendering, thus prolonging their render time.

John

Exactly like I do I think these settings are most bang for bucks. Very good quality/render time ratio
Soft-shadows is quite time-consuming indeed and I think too that rendering with GI 4/4 (which is in the majority of cases really not necessary) is probably the reason for your time-consuming renders Mark.

[TheBlackHole]

Just default with usually more atmo samples when needed. I use Photoshop for postwork (if it actually needs any)(I don't usually do any postwork at all) and I use plain Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to jpg them.h