2.57b render speed incredibly better than 2.49b, but it is buggy

Support Lighting and Rendering
#1

Hello all, I’d like to share my experience of comparing the render speed of 2.49b and 2.57b.

I have a scene with two simple objects on a ground plane, using blurry reflections, AO, Sky and Atmosphere, one ray shadow… all samples set to 2… etc. etc. - all optimised for a clean illustrative look over many test renders at small sizes in 2.49. I calculated the final pic would take about 8 hours on my 6 core and set it to render overnight. After 9 hours it still wasn’t done, I cancel it and less than half the picture has been rendered. The whole would take more than 18 hours, probably over 20.

So I downloaded 2.57b, opened the scene and it’s immediately obvious from small test renders that it is greatly faster. The scene doesn’t look quite the same as in 2.49, so I adjust the samples upward, to 4 or 6. Render at full size - guess how long it takes? Less than 5 minutes! Five effing minutes! I can’t even calculate by how many percent faster that is. Please note that all settings are as in 2.49, except for the increased samples.

This leads me to ask two things: have others experienced such incredible speed up in 2.57 over 2.49? And how did anyone get any work done in 2.49?

Lastly, a note that 2.57 is obviously buggy. I tried to increase samples of the sunlight shadow, but doing that very weirdly interfered with the atmospheric effect - this wasn’t happening in 2.49.

The bottom line: 2.57 is a beauty and I’m grateful to the Blender Foundation for it. But please, if they read this, focus on fixing the bugs (and bringing back missing functionality).

#2

I need to use 2.57 more. I really gritted my teeth on 2.49 and developed a very fluid workflow in that. I was pumping out work like nobody’s business. In comparison, In 2.57, I’ve messed around with the python scripts that constantly change , and occasionally do a work or two. I guess the only reason 2.49 was so useful for me was that i used it ALOT. We’re talking about as much time as someone spends on WoW / games in general I was spending keying text motion graphics and making pics. The new interface has a bunch of nice tools I could see using. I think I need to spend more time focusing on one than trying to use all of them.
The rigify alone will probably save me a bunch of work since I never seemed to rig a full bodied character “properly” :\
the particles got a whole lot better too :smiley:

But lighting in general, I’m switching to area lights with a VERY low emit setting and a slight warm tint to them to replace the suns I used in 2.49.

#3

Thanks for sharing, AMD. I was referring more to the slowness of rendering in 2.49, I know the workflow is otherwise fast. To be fair, I think I could have speeded up the render a little. I could have lowered the octree resolution from 128 to 64, that would have helped. I also suspect that by setting samples in materials and shadow as low as I could, at 2, and then set AA to 16, I caused more of a slowdown that if I had samples higher, but AA at 8. Still, I’m sure even then 2.57 render would still be a lot faster. I can confirm that by choosing octree as accelleration method in 2.57, it gives me slowness comparable to 2.49. As for area light replacing the sun, good idea. It should be more controllable, with softer shadow available.