Speeding up POV-Ray when using transparent bricks

[isopyl]

Hi,

I've created a model in LDD that's contains a few 2x1 clear transparent bricks. When I export the model without the transparent bricks using "LDD to POV-Ray" and render it in POV-Ray, it only takes about 20 minutes to render. If I include the transparent bricks it takes..., well I don't know, its been going now for 27 hours and its still only at 33% (at one point it was down to 6 PPM, currently at 240 PPM). This is clearly not very practical so I'm looking for any hints and tips to change any settings in either "LDD to POV-Ray" or POV-Ray to speed up the render. Current settings are width: 1000, height: 1200 (the actual model is only about 500wx600h with lots of white space around it), everything else at the default settings.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Calabar]

Unfortunately transparent bricks are very heavy to render.

You could try the bbqqq trick assembling three separate sub-renderings.

Take a look at it here.

There is obviously the chance to lower the quality of transparent bricks, but about that wait the suggestions of other users expert in using powray. Or maybe you can find something in the powray guide linked in the Section Index (look among pinned topics for the index).

[hrontos]

As a first atempt, try "Don't bevel transparent bricks". But they will look different. If they are not very visible, then there will be no visual difference in output quality.

[Palathadric]

Are you rendering on a transparent background?

[isopyl]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. Turning on ""Don't bevel transparent bricks" helped a little but I had to lower the quality from 11 to 8 to render in a reasonable time. The next issue is getting rid of the white lines everywhere between the bricks. I noticed they were present even when the quality was set to the highest. Is this something to do with the lighting? Do I need to soften the lighting somehow?

Cheers,

Stephen

[JM1971]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. Turning on ""Don't bevel transparent bricks" helped a little but I had to lower the quality from 11 to 8 to render in a reasonable time. The next issue is getting rid of the white lines everywhere between the bricks. I noticed they were present even when the quality was set to the highest. Is this something to do with the lighting? Do I need to soften the lighting somehow?

Cheers,

Stephen

Thats why I never use any bevel at all, a guess is the bevel is so fine that it is conflicting with anti alias somehow.

I tried a render at 4000x4000 and resized to 400x400 in photoshop, look a bit better.

Edited April 28, 2014 by JM1971

[isopyl]

Thats why I never use any bevel at all, a guess is the bevel is so fine that it is conflicting with anti alias somehow.

I tried a render at 4000x4000 and resized to 400x400 in photoshop, look a bit better.

I turned bevel off, i.e. set Level of Details on the Model tab of LDD To POV-Ray to "original LDD geometry" and now I have the problem of all bricks of the same colour are just merged together in one blob of colour. There aren't any dividing lines between bricks like there are in your render. It looks like the defaults aren't great.