Dark Scarab – Blender Reference

Render Times

Warning!
These times are not going to be the same as your render times. Different scenes as well as
your computer will create different times compared to what is shown here. The percentages
shown in this document may also be different. The point of this is to give you an idea on what
will make your renders faster or slower and a ballpark estimation on how much it will affect the
times of your renders.

My scene consisted of my Camaro with no textures, materials, or ambient occlusion which would
increase the rendering time. Rendering times are an average of three trials. Green shows the fastest, blue shows
the default settings, Red is slowest. All blue times should be the same, or at least close to it.

Here are the default settings if you are interested:

Format and Size (Excluding Preview)

The default size is the same as the PAL size. However, the default settings are different than the settings
that are set when Blender opens and what is above. Format has no effect what-so-ever because this only sets
what you can save the render as after rendering is complete.

Size Time Percent of Default

PAL 5.38s 100.75%
NTSC 4.47s 83.71%
Default 5.34s 100%
PC 5.21s 97.57%
PAL 16:9 5.62s 105.24%
PANO 6.88s 128.84%
FULL 7.44s 139.33%
HD 8.82s 165.23%

OSA Settings
Be careful with this setting. This can change the render times drastically, but it will also change the
quality of your render drastically as well.

Setting Time Percent of Default

Off 3.46s 62.34%
5 4.71s 84.86%
8 5.55s 100%
11 6.45s 116.22%
16 8.01s 144.26%
Dark Scarab – Blender Reference
Render Times
Fields and Anti-aliasing
No real difference was found until the Box setting and even that wasn’t much. Theoretically, Mitch
and/or CatRom should take the longest and it goes faster as you go down the list since they make the cleanest
edge.

Turning Fields off is much faster and I could not tell any difference between the render qualities. Filter
Size seems to have no real effect on render times.

Fields On Fields Off (Default)

Filter Time Percent of Default Filter Time Percent of Default
Mitch 10.24s 100.10% Mitch 5.47s 99.64%
CatRom 10.34s 101.08% CatRom 5.52s 100.55%
Gauss 10.23s 100% Gauss 5.49s 100%
Cubic 10.25s 100.20% Cubic 5.49s 100%
Quad 10.30s 100.68% Quad 5.54s 100.91%
Tent 10.25s 100.20% Tent 5.43s 98.91%
Box 9.89s 96.68% Box 5.34s 97.27%

Fields On/Off (Avg. from the above times)

Fields On 10.21s 186.65% (of Off)
Fields Off 5.47s 53.57% (of On)

Filter Size Time Percent of Default

0.50 5.46s 99.64%
0.75 5.40s 98.54%
1.00 5.48s 100% (Slowest)
1.25 5.43s 99.09%
1.50 5.43s 99.09%

Octree Resolution
It’s very easy to see the changes with this setting. However, the more complex your scene is, the higher
you should have this setting for best times. I am not sure when to change this setting when it comes to size or
poly-count and from what I have found no one really does. No apparent image quality changes with this setting.

My test used a model with 35k vertices and 38k faces, just for reference.

Resolution Time Percent of Default

64 5.16s 93.48%
128 5.52s 100%
256 5.90s 106.88%
512 7.34s 132.97%
Dark Scarab – Blender Reference
Render Times
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient Occlusion can make your scene look incredibly better or slightly better depending on the
circumstances. The higher setting you give ambient occlusion the longer it will take. The following are the only
settings that seem to change the render times drastically. As you can see below, this test showed a render that
took over 25 times longer than the default, however with a setting that high there is no graininess.

With Raytrace (Constant QMC)

Samples Time Percent of Default

Off 5.22s 7.4%
2 28.61s 40.47%
4 47.05s 66.56%
5 1m 10.69s 100%
8 2m 48.89s 238.92%
16 10m 42.85s 909.39%
32 42m 21.93s 2541.93%

Now I tested the three major AO settings. For my test, the QMC’s were about the same. Once again, different
circumstances can change that. For instance, Adaptive is faster if you use the threshold setting as shown later
on. Constant Jitter will be the fastest but the quality is the worst. It’s good for testing though.

Type Time Percent of Default

Constant QMC 1m 8.66s 100%
Adaptive QMC 1m 8.78s 100.17%
Constant Jitter 23.69s 34.5%

Adaptive QMC: Threshold

Basically the higher this you set this setting the faster the render is going to be. Threshold stops Blender
from Rendering all of the areas that need AO, therefore less calculating and faster renders. The higher you set
this, or the more you omit from calculations, the faster your render will be. With the use of this setting, it can be
faster than Constant unlike the times above.

Setting Time Percent of Default

0 1m 9.45s 100% (Slowest)
0.50 39.30s 56.59%
1 38.89s 55.99%

The other settings in Ambient Occlusion did not seem to create any change in the amount of time it took to
render, so use them as you see fit.
Dark Scarab – Blender Reference
Render Times
Others

There are many other settings that will lengthen the rendering time. Here is a list of those that I know
will increase your rending time:

- Textures
Using no textures will be the fastest. Once you begin adding textures to your models or scenes the
rendering time will increase. The amount of increase depends on what texture you use. If you use one of the
built in settings this will render only a little slower than without it. If you use an image, it all depends on the
resolution of the image you are using. The higher the resolution the slower your render is going to be.

- Materials
Just adding color to your scenes will hardly affect your render time at all. However a few settings can
drastically change the length of time you are waiting. Using ‘Ray Mirror’, ‘Ray Transp’ or ‘ZTransp’, or
Subsurface Scattering will all slow the rendering down. ZTransp is going to be faster than RayTransp but by
using ZTransp you sacrifice the use of all the settings available with Ray Transp’.
Subsurface Scattering will slow your render down, however it calculates before the actual rendering
begins. When using Subsurface Scattering it will ‘render’ the parts of the scene that uses it, then actually
finishes your render.

- Radiosity
Radiosity is another setting that will calculate before your scene will actually begin to render. The time
it takes mainly depends on the ‘Max Iterations’ setting. The higher this setting the longer it will take. Blender
recommends a setting of at least 100. If you leave this at zero, it will take forever (I’ve never waited long
enough to see how far it would go). I never leave it at zero.

- Scene Complexity
The more complex your scene is the longer it will take to render. One object will be much faster than
1000 objects. The same goes for one object with 8 vertices compared to an object that has 100,000 vertices.
Also, the more of the world background you leave open the faster your render will be. The world background
renders extremely quickly.

- Animations
This one is the most obvious. Instead of doing one render, you are doing hundreds so naturally it will
take longer. However, if you are rendering for the Video Sequence Editor it will be very fast compared to a
standard animation. The stuff in the video sequence editor is typically already rendered the standard way or is
an imported video.

Do you know of other factors that I should include here? Let me know in the forums or send me a
message.