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How many iterations are too many?

billyben_0077a25354billyben_0077a25354 Posts: 771
in The Commons

Looking for reasonable settings for time and iteratrioins for renders that will take longer than 2 hours.  Suggestyions from the gurus?

Comments

  • TesseractSpaceTesseractSpace Posts: 1,444

    I usually just eyeball it. If it looks good it's done. (And sometimes even the grainy look of a low convergence can fit the tone of an image. )

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,979

    More or less the same question:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/414631/taking-way-too-long-to-render#latest

  • lamoid_5f20d3e469lamoid_5f20d3e469 Posts: 301

    There are so many variables involved, Billy Ben, that a general rule is not possible. If you have the time, I suggest that you render the scene you are interested in with unlimited time (Max Time = 0) and the maximum number of iterations possible  (Max Samples = 15000) and with Rendering Quality Enable = Off. Then look at it periodically and note the number of iterations that have elapsed when it looks good to you.

    For me, a portrait that contains only one complex figure with high resolution textures and no background illuminated by 3-5 lights rendered at 4000 x 8000 pixels usually looks pretty good to me after 3500 iterations. Under low light it might take 5000. With my hardware (nvidia RTX 2070) that usually takes about 6 hours; but the results can be stunning.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    edited June 2020

    itterations are useless imo.

    They are great for the Render Engine keeping track of where it's at.

    They tell us the user zero about how the render is doing.

    On any given image; more itterations means less noise. Image x and image y; comparing images and itterations will give a different look - if not everywhere then somewhere.

    Post edited by nicstt on
  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,333

    I put it at 3000 and for the 1% that 3000 iterations isn't enough for you can add another 2000 iterations before resuming the render (I think you can do that). I've tried 5000 and even 10000 once but to my eyes on my 14 year old FHD LED monitor there is no difference worthwhile.

  • GolaMGolaM Posts: 109

    As was mentioned, this heavily depends on the scene. Very dark scenes or ones with complicated reflective / translucent / refracting things take more.

    I mostly set the iray denoiser to kick in at 2500 iterations and render near 3000 overall. Works on most scenes for me

  • billyben_0077a25354billyben_0077a25354 Posts: 771

    Thanks everyone for your answers.  You have helped immensely.

  • duckbombduckbomb Posts: 585
    nicstt said:

    itterations are useless imo.

    They are great for the Render Engine keeping track of where it's at.

    They tell us the user zero about how the render is doing.

    On any given image; more itterations means less noise. Image x and image y; comparing images and itterations will give a different look - if not everywhere then somewhere.

    Well, I use the iterations to gauge the speed at which it is rendering...  sometimes I see that it's going really, really slow and I either have to kill processes on my computer or re-adjust the scene, or I know that I should just find something else to do for a while.

     

    I agree, however, that iterations are useless as far as an actual completion measurement would go.

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