[Asmithey]

So, I have a client who wants an animation of a project I did still renderings for. The only thing is that it takes about 45 minutes to write each mxs file. There is lots of geometry. I can reduce some of the geometry but I still feel it will not be enough. Any one run into this problem on a Maxwell animation. I know, get a faster computer. That is not an option right now.

Thanks for any insight.

Aaron

[Bubbaloo]

What I've done in the past... I hate to admit... convert the scene to use mental ray. You do what ya gotta do, right? Unless the client wants to pay for a render farm.

[Asmithey]

I can get them to use a render farm, but I just can't get the mxs files to produce fast enough on my end. I could do it in Form-Z but it will look nothing like the Maxwell renderings they have been showing their clients.

[Bubbaloo]

It sounds like you are at the mercy of a single-threaded exporter. Even Max's is this way too. The only thing I can suggest is to try to optimize the scene as much as possible and try to get that export time down to something manageable.

Also, maybe you can export only the animated camera, then import/merge the rest of the scene into each frame? Would be quicker than waiting for export.

[kami]

45 min for one mxs? how could you even create a single rendering like this?
waiting for test renders is hard enough ... but this long even before it starts?

sorry for not beeing able to help for your animation. I've never had any mxs export taking longer than 2-3 min. (working with rhino). Maybe because rhino can't handle more data

[lord.saddler]

Does your scene allow Render Instances? I am on a animation Project right now, and it takes 20 sec/frame to export a Scene with 140.000 Objects/Instances. What is your polycount? 45 minutes sounds like there is a lot of space for geometry/scene optimization.

[polynurb]

don't know if this helps.. as i don't know if the fZ plugin has that functionality:

in rhino plugIn there is "cache meshes" option.. which prevents mesh regeneration if nothing has changed in between exports.. like with an animation..

[Asmithey]

Here is some of the project info. I have 168 instances. See Bellow. It is a heavy scene. Resolution is at 1280 x 720.

Plynurb.... I do not Think FZ has that functionality. I need to double check though.

Saddler.... I am using many instances. I have a lot of modeled vehicles, trees and landscape which I know are bogging it down. These could be optimized for efficiency but would take time to do so. It renders fine once it is done exporting though.

It seems like whenever I use my plant and tree library this always happens. The models are very detailed and high poly. But damn they look good. I am sure this is contributing. I am doing this in 1.7.1 because the render farm I will need to use has not updated to 2.0 yet.

This file does need cleaned up though. If I turn everything off but the site and building models, it exprots less than a minute.

[Asmithey]

So, I have been going through my file and cleaning it up and rearranging things. I think the biggest issue was the amount of instances touching each other. Mainly my plant models. Since I have to do this on 1.7.1, touching instances is an issue. But after rearranging my instances to not touch each other and thinning out some of the models, I now have the export time from Form-Z to Maxwell Render down from 45 min. to 8 min. My goal is 5 min. We'll see.

[pylon]

Hi Aaron,

If you are using procedural textures, try reducing the Rendered Textures resolution to 512x512 or even less, if possible. This will speed up the export.

In the forthcoming version of the plugin (2.0.2.x) the export progress window has been much improved, so you can usually see if there are problem objects or surface styles that are taking a long time. (I know this doesn't help you now with 1.7.)

Ben