Just thought I’d share something I’ve come across for improving Cycles rendering speeds, and also notably for the viewport performance when in rendered mode. Many of you may already know this but I’ve been using Blender for almost 2 years and hadn’t come across it.
Try really really dropping the number of bounces down that you use, and see if turning off caustics makes much difference to your render.
Admittedly my renders are generally of schematics so this won’t be appropriate for very fine work but is very acceptable for my purposes, and maybe for yours.
My rendered viewport performance is also now blisteringly fast, 0-10 sample in a matter of <1s and snappy navigating around. If you’re making quick changes in viewport rendered mode I’ve found this to be very useful.
Yep, that was one of the first things I do with a new Blender build. I “bottom” out Cycles and create a preset for what I consider a Direct light preview. Also tweaking the Tile count under the Performance rollout can have an affect on render speed we well.
Netbooks really aren’t made for this kind of thing mate. Running linux I hear can help, and having all of your settings as low as possible for on netbook rendering. For final renders using a render farm like render street is probably your best bet.
I wouldn’t have thought there’s an easy fix there unfortunately.
