Posted by CJ Shumate on January 27, 1999 at 11:08:17:
In Reply to: Speeding up rendering posted by Gary Utz on January 26, 1999 at 03:36:48:
Hello Gary,
It's good to hear from you.
Here are a few hints and tips that can help speed up your PictureMaker renderings...
1) Model lights take the most memory and the most calculation time than any other type of object I can think of. Point lights especially because they cast light in six directions, rather than one direction like a spot light. Hiding lights that do not contribute to your current view will certainly help.
I do not believe that objects that cannot be seen from the current view being rendered are actually rendered by PictureMaker, but hiding those objects saves the time it would take PictureMaker to sort out those objects not being rendered.
2) As I alluded to above, hiding phases that contain objects that are not visible from the current view being rendered will save PictureMaker the trouble of sorting those objects.
3) The size (in pixels) of the Lights and Textures window makes a big difference in rendering time and memory usage with PictureMaker. The smaller the window, the fewer the pixels that must be calculated and rendered. Therefore, making a small window for rendering previews is a very efficient way to go.
4) Grouping objects has no affect on rendering speed or memory usage in PictureMaker.
5) No information is saved between renderings. Unlike a radiosity rendering solution, which renders all surfaces in the model so that changing views requires only a redraw, PictureMaker is a scan-line renderer. This means that, for each view, the entire scene is re-calculated, but only those objects visible in the current view are rendered. Radiance is another system of rendering in which information is saved between renderings, making subsequent rendering take less time than the first one.
I hope this helps get you started and familiar with rendering using LightWorks PictureMaker. Please let us know whenever you have further questions. Also, if anyone else on the board has further hints or tips, please feel free to share them with us.
Thanks,
CJ Shumate
support@artifice.com