Animation Project & How to get faster render times?

S

SimonCreations

Active member
I started working on a project this evening, and I was getting frustrated by very slow render times (10 mins for about 5 seconds of animation). I checked my preferences and set the memory usage up to 90% (I have 2 gigs of RAM)... however, when I render a scene it says that it is only using 6% of my RAM... What is the deal? Can I optimize After Effects to use more of my ram?

Btw, here is the project I've been working on.. a text animation with 3d camera movement:
http://www.simon-carr.com/video/
 
Rendering from AE is not a ram issue. If you did a ram preview, you would be using your memory. Rendering is processor only. There are some graphics cards which may assist with rendering, but on the whole, render times are always based on the speed of your cpu.

10 mins for 5 seconds of animation is not that bad. I think you are used to having your NLE of choice blow through video, and are expecting AE to do the same. But it doesn't work that way. AE does not (by default) work with interlaced footage, it creates non-interlaced (not to be confused with progressive, though they are similar) footage so when you tweak and manipulate, you get the highest quality upon output. And that takes CPU power to do. AE does not use codecs to help the process.

If you think 10 minutes is harsh, try out a 3D program. 10 minutes for a full on 5 seconds would be something that most of us could only dream of.

I have had work in AE that was 10 seconds per frame, and that was for a 30 second commercial. Do the math. It was a pain to say the least.

If you are not happy with your render times, you need to invest in a faster processor, or split the job over multiple systems.

In 3D, with reflections, refraction, HDR based lighting (global illumination), a medium anti-aliasing, sub patching, textures, and god forbid, any soft or hard body dynamics or particles, you are looking at truly harsh render times. 5-30 minutes per frame. Now THAT is a kick in the ass.

It all depends on what you are doing. Ten minutes for 5 seconds is very reasonable.

Hopefully, kai, and oneinfiniteloop can bring some more knowledge to the table. They both know far more than I in both AE and in the 3D realm where render times become an issue. If they chime in, take a listen.


Your render times are normal, depending on what you are doing.


M
 
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I've actually been using Lightwave for several years now.. I know how radiosity, reflections, anti-aliasing, ray-tracing etc. effects render times. There have been a few projects that I've done that took a painfully long time to render (several days for just 20 seconds).

However, I figured After Effects would have much better render times.. and it has for the most part. I guess there are certain effects in AE that require a lot of math to calculate - because most of my renders have been relatively fast.

I suppose I could upgrade my video card.. but I would rather get another computer and split the rendering between the two.
 
In 1989 I waited 5 days for my amiga500 running "Turbo Silver" to render out ONE 320x240 FRAME of a reflective sphere inside a room of mirrors with a checkerboard floor, only to find the image completely black because the light's falloff was so small it didn't illuminate anything. But they were all ray traced black pixels.

I had to use this interface to make the stuff too.
turbo1.gif

turbo2.gif

Now that was slow rendering.
 
You can also buy Nucleo from www.gridironsoftware.com.

there is a $50 version that will make use of your full CPU when rendering which most probably will speed up the type of rendering you're doing,

or the Pro 2 Version for $395 which has all the bells and whistles that go with it.

- derrick
 
nucleo pro looks nice.. but it seems like it only works with After Effects 7 and CS3. I am using 6.5, and I'm not sure if it will work with that.. Anybody want to give me a free copy of AE 7 or CS3?? :huh:
 
Arson said:
In 1989 I waited 5 days for my amiga500 running "Turbo Silver" to render out ONE 320x240 FRAME of a reflective sphere inside a room of mirrors with a checkerboard floor, only to find the image completely black because the light's falloff was so small it didn't illuminate anything. But they were all ray traced black pixels.

I had to use this interface to make the stuff too.
turbo1.gif

turbo2.gif

Now that was slow rendering.
Click to expand...

Yikes! Although that Amiga project may have been a pain, for 1989, what could we expect? That was around the time of 386s running with around 12M processors, right? I think that's close.

Anyway, hell of a screen shot.
 
Yes it was around 386 era. A couple years later I upgraded to a 486/33mhz with a 100 meg hard drive and a whopping 8 megs of ram to run 3D Studio R1. And one of the first generation of ati cards that supported 24 bit color in 640x480. It's still in a dusty corner of the basement.
 
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