Hi,
I've been trying to catch a deadline waiting for an animation to finish for about a week. Currently each frame takes 67 seconds to finish and total expected rendering time is reported as 51 hours. I just thought what if I hide the exterior objects while the camera is inside, it should at least reduce some object preparation, and in the course of 2500 frames, even a 2 second gain matters.
I hid the objects and the rendering time is reduced down to 31 seconds. This is a serious gain.
It may not be possible but, an object visibility check after the camera motion is determined and auto hiding the occluded objects would drastically improve rendering time. If it can be done fast enough this might even improve the rendering times of still renders.
Regards