this is a really tough question highly dependent on many factors

1. have you gone ape shit with the # of polygons?

2. how much raytrace material are you using? can you find alternate way of accomplishing what you are doing with standard materials

3. how many lights are you using?

4. raytraced shadows or shadow maps, can you increase the quadtree depth for raytrace or the sample map for shadow

5. increase your render cache in the config.

6. save your file as a new file and convert everything to editable meshes

7. VRAY will take longer ton configure and longer to render so just forget about it, scanline is quicker, period

8. dont antialias on the material level, do it through the render panel

9. make sure no other programs are running while you are rendering

if i think of anymore ill post again

dont render with all 4 views open, use one single preferably one with all bounding boxes rather than anti-aliased wireframe

minimize render window

Buy another computer, much cheaper and effective than a vray license

you could try dumping into max and using mental ray, depending on your materials/settings this could speed things up alot. if you don't know a little max, however, it may be too much of a pain.

do any of the computer labs have the software you need? render on a school comp, lock the comp (window key+L) and just tape a "rendering" sign to the monitor

you could also pay me under the table to render it on my xeons. ;0

i don't understand your questions due to my viz-illiterate.

i was working on a file that i downloaded from autodesk.com, that i could follow pdf-formatted tutorial
i can tell you that... the author of the tutorial love to use lots of ray trace, mental ray.
and i was working on making a light as sun light.

aseid... thank you for your tips

what is scan light?

and what is antialias?

scanline "not scan light" is the default render engine for max and viz

antialias is a technique that applications use to simulate clean angularity, which you know is impossible to do achieve with raster images

read up on it, mind blowing stuff

my recommendation to you, learn the basics, well

then move on the mental ray at a later date

you gotta learn how every button works and how it is used, thats the only way to really get going in max to gain control

and to learn what is going to just kill your computer performance, and how to work an alternative workflow out

takes time

viz, max, same thing, shouldnt hold you back

skip Mental Ray, for sure. It's got a fast raytracing engine, but it is a beast and there is no possible way you could get it to look good, let alone be fast.

aseid pretty much covered things.

Soft Shadows - use these for everything, if you can get away with it. The only limitation will be RAM, so hit CTRL + SHFT + ESC and monitor it. If you hit the limit, it's really gonna slow down or crash, then you're screwed.

RayTracing - I would not use raytraced materials at all. Use a raytrace MAP in the refelction slot of the glass materials.

Refraction - make sure NOTHING is refracting

Fall Off and other goodies - SKIP ALL OF THEM, they'll kill the rendering

Polygons - what's your poly count? Delete EVERYTHING you don't see. RPCs are good, but eat the hell out of the ram.

Plants, Cars, etc. - skip them all. Composite in Photoshop. Put the cars in the scene in the right places, then render with a black background, save out the alpha channel (I'd go with TIFFs), then paste in Photoshop

Global Illumination - skip it. Don't use VRay, Final Render, etc., you don't have the computer resources or the time to learn them.

Light Tracer - forget it, it's a DOG!!! It's slower than anything. Looks good, but is beyond unreasonable.

Light Dome - use a simple light dome for good lighting. If that's still too slow (it'll eat a ton of ram with all the soft shadows), then go with a classic 3 light setup.

If you have any specific questions, email me.


Oh, if you have lotsa money, consider an online render farm. They could render everything you need in a day. It might be worth it, and I've heard of people spending $$ on worse things for presenations.


Good luck.