LOOKING FOR EFFICIENCIES IN RENDERING 600X420 SketchUp Pro8

Rich,

I've been a program user or about 4 years and come a long way in understanding the product. In rendering I'm able to understand logic in starting with lower resolution images until lighting channels are dialed in and the tweeks necessary are made in order to render higher quality results.

I'm not certain if I've hit a wall or not however I have a 9.09 GB file that seems to be taking forever 60 min. plus just to render small 600x420 test. I'm set at 20 passes and I'm only using 2 channels 0 & 1 in exterior mode

I'm uploading via ftp .skp file called 27919 9-2-13. I'm wondering if you would be able to tell me If you are able to render this low res. size image any quicker than I am. After 60 min. the opening the rendering screen never goes beyond (preparing to render). I've had greater success with much larger files.

Since I'm not able to get past the (preparing rendering screen) I'm not sure if a batch is even available to send.

Part of my success with the program has been with the support and forum you have setup on your site. Thanks

John Rector

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Permalink Reply by John Rector on September 3, 2013 at 12:20pm

Supplemental Information for This Recent Post

Windows 7 (64 bit)

I7 Core Processor

64 GB

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on September 3, 2013 at 1:27pm

I received your file. I'll render it and see how long it takes here.

What I suspect, though, is that the large number of lights in it is what is slowing things down for you.

We have several way of placing lights in a model, and while using materials as lights, setting the material to illuminate, is a fast way to make something a light, it can get you into trouble quickly too, since it can end up creating hundreds or thousaneds of light sources, depending on the way the faces in the surface are arranged.

In the image below, I ran our light query function on your model and see where a single surface with 510 faces in it is set to illuminate because it is material RPS_color_white, which is set to make each "mesh" in the surface a 75 watt light source.

I'll render it and see how many lights we think are being used at render time. This may take a while though.

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Permalink Reply by John Rector on September 3, 2013 at 1:50pm

Rich,

Makes total sense. If I turn off the down lights an and set the ceiling surfaces to self glow would this aid in allowing me to illuminate the building interior area behind the front of building (glass curtain wall) to give the glass the transparent effect.

This is effect I thought I'd be able to create in this rendering series.

Thanks again

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on September 3, 2013 at 3:26pm

Yeah, there ended up being 25160 light sources being sent to the renderer.

The "statistics":

Geometry:
Meshes: 46577
Faces: 690729
Materials: 54
Lights: 25160

If you just want something to appear brighter, set the material "Self Glow", instead of the "Illuminance", and if you want an object, like a surface or a component, to be a light source, set its object properties to make it a light, then we only send one light source to the render, which really speeds things up.