To
make a scene render faster, do any of the following:
- Diagnose the scene to find ways to render
the scene faster using
Render > Run Render Diagnostics.
You can use this tool to monitor how well you optimize the scene
and to search for limitations and potential problems that may occur.
For more information on render diagnostics, see
Run diagnostics and
mental ray for Maya diagnostics.
- Perform scene optimizations:
- Avoid memory swapping by:
- Closing all applications before rendering
to maximize the amount of memory available for rendering (including
Maya if rendering from a shell or command line).
- Setting the TEMP or TMPDIR variable as
the location for temporary render cache files: -TMPDIR (Linux) or
- TEMP (Windows and Mac OS X) to make plenty of room for temporary
rendered files. Make sure that the value of those variables points
to a local, fast hard drive, not a network drive.
- For Maya software and mental ray for
Maya, Test Resolution (Render
> Test Resolution) lets you select a reduced resolution
to test render the scene. For more information on test rendering
strategies, see
Visualize interactively with IPR.
- For
Maya software, if the scene contains several identical surfaces
(for example, multiple spheres), use Optimize Instances in
the
Render Settings: Maya Software tab to
improve rendering performance.
- Turn off motion blur if you don’t need
it (the Vector renderer has no motion blur). For the Maya software
renderer, use 2D motion blur instead of 3D motion blur when possible.
See 2D Motion Blur global attributes
and 3D Motion Blur in the
Render Settings window for
details.
Use average BSP (mental
ray for Maya) settings
When mental
ray for Maya raytraces, it calculates the effects using an average of
the depth and the average of the leaf size settings of the BSP.
To speed up subsequent
renderings, you can render instead with the average settings (instead
of your initial settings).
Find the averages in
Maya's Output Window after you render
the scene the first time (with Verbosity Level set
to Progress Messages or above
in
Render > Render Current Frame > and
Render > Batch Render > ), then
change the settings in the Memory and Performance section.
Example averages found
in the Output Window
- RCI 0.2 info : main bsp tree statistics:
- RCI 0.2 info : max depth : 40
- RCI 0.2 info : max leaf size : 114
- RCI 0.2 info : average depth : 22
- RCI 0.2 info : average leaf size : 7
- RCI 0.2 info : leafnodes : 8185
- RCI 0.2 info : bsp size (Kb) : 393