which two rendering engines are you refering? Scanline is slower than mental ray but it is more stable. MR renderer engine works best with MR material and when using it sstart with draft mode and a small render frame window to do test renders. then when you're happy step up the default settings, you don't have to tweek anything at this stage. but each higher default setting will take longer to render as it spends more time recreating the scene.
not uncommon to hear of people leaving their machines to do a final render that would take anything from several days to 7 days all dependant on the level of realism you want to recreate.
with time and many rendering challenges through knowing which light settings work for each
unique scene, you'll be able to fine tune the lights and the rendering options to take into consideration post rendering for final touches in lets say photoshop.
When I first started I did a render that took 8 hours, I wanted to cry, i then rendered an animation that took nearly 5 days and then after doign tutorials on FI & GI I got the animation rendering time down to 4 hours.
It pays to read and prepare a little to save a lot of time in the long run. I can now produce renders I am pleased with in little uder 4 minutes but there are others that take hours. I need to send in some renders to my collge for their prospectus, at 300 dpi a4, they'll take at least 6 hours each minimum, and I'm prepared to render for days at the highest setting to produce one piece of work which will be worth while.
So its hard to say how long is appropriate, easier to ask 'how long is a piece of string' lol show the render settings and perhaps we can shine more light on it. sorry about the cheesy joke lol
2nd May 2007
Linear Mode
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