Long render - laptop too pathetic?

[Bosseye]

Fisrt up, Happy New Year everyone

Ok, so I'm taking some time to trial Indigo with a view to buying the full licence for use at work. Its an awesome bit of software frankly, but I have a question about the rendering time.

I understand its unbiased and can take a while to complete, and I suspect the issue is that my laptop isn't quite man enough for the task of rendering in any decent timescale, but I expected things to be a little further on than this. Image attached - this has been rendering now for almost 18 hours and its not hugely different from how it was 3 hours in. Progress is being made and the grain is gradually getting less, but is this normal?

Its not a massively complex scene, its an enclosed box, the windows are set to exit portals and being the free version its only a low res render. Any ideas as to how I can speed things up? How RAM dependant is Indigo? I've got my performance manager open and its been killing the processor for 18 hours, but only using half the RAM.

Laptop specs are:
Intel Dual Core T2080 @ 1.73Ghz each
A paltry 1Gb RAM
32 Bit operating system

Guessing thats the issue, just not enough power?



Cheers guys, this forum has been invaluable in getting me started.

[Pibuz]

Hi bosseye, glad you're giving Indigo a try.

First question I ask is: what render method are you using? Try setting BiDir MLT for a scene with multiple light sources and lots of bounced lights like yours.

Second thing: do you have separate layers for sun/sky and emitters? If so, try turning off the spotlights while rendering, and report if there's still loads of noise in the image. I'm asking because I often notice this issue, resulting in my case from an excessive overpowering of the emitters: in fact if you have sun AND emitters, emitters have to be pushed up a lot, given the huge difference of efficacy. Doing this, fireflies start to appear: try not to exaggerate too much with the power of the emitters or you'll get fireflies.

Third thing: it is always a bad idea to have an emitter placed very close to a metallic surface, I noticed. For example, the inner side of your spotlights, if you have one. Try to colour the inner side with a white diffuse mat: it will be equally impossible to distinguish, just because it's completely well-lit by your emitter.

Fourth thing: If you have very reflective materials (like your floor), it is always a good idea to have a small gap of 0.0005-0.001 meters separating the objects you put on, or against, them. This will give Indigo some help in correctly calculating the corners.

Hope you can fix this, bosseye. Post your progresses for further help!
BTW, a faster PC wouldn't harm

[Bosseye]

Hi Pibuz, thanks for the helpful reply - some things to try there definately.

Ok, first: I'm still using the default Path Tracing, but I'll try BiDir MLT and see if that changes anything. I guess I need to look into the differences more! I noticed the terms in the technical library, but didn't pay much attention. I've got the scene set to camera tone mapping at 200 iso rather than Reinhard tone mapping if that makes a difference?

Second: Sun and Sky remains as the Sketchup default - not sure if thats on a seperate layer? My spotlights are left on Layer 0, as componants - I've been too busy trying to get my head round materials and lighting etc that I forgot all about layering things up! I'll put them on a different layer, turn them off and see. And yes, I have whacked up the eficacy of the lights to make them show up. The sun naturally overpowers the internal lights, which makes the inside of my toilets a bit gloomy - more realistic I'm sure, but in this case I need it to look a little more 'welcoming' if you see what I mean, hence why my spotlights are more overpowered than is strictly realistic.

Fireflies aren't a huge problem for me in a way, the odd few I've had on my test renders I just touch up in photoshop later.

Third: Interesting point! I've got the surround of my spotlights set to a reflective chrome material - I would agree actually that there probably isn't much point, as you can really see any reflective detail in them anyway. I'll make them a grey diffuse material instead.

Fourth: Ok, interesting. Most of my walls and floors are set to a mildly reflective Phong material to simulate slightly shiny paint.

So overall I'm hoping that the grain would eventually disappear if I left it to render for say a couple of days? Even with my settings as they currently are, would the noise gradually be removed from the final render and its just a case of waiting?

Thanks for tips anyway, nice to get someone with some experience pointing the way

[Bosseye]

Ok image attached - changed the reflective surround of the spotlights to a grey diffuse and altered the render settings to Bidirectional MLT. This took nearly 6 hours, so massively faster and a much better result!

Thanks Pibuz!

[Pibuz]

Hi boss, glad to have been of any help.
I don't know if your noise will go away if you let the render cook another two days: common noise is something very distributed and somehow uniform in the image. The noise I see in your image shows black or dark grey spots here and there, and they seem to be errors to me. If you have no other works to do, though, you might want to let the render cook anyway, and on wednesday let's see if the noise issue has gone better!

[Pibuz]

Your new update is looking really good!
See? Nothing too difficult to solve, indeed

Glad it all works fine for you now!