Author Topic: Interactive light mix render times?  (Read 4268 times)

2020-06-28, 20:52:03

PepperyTakumi

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Hey! Just a quick query.

What affect does using interactive light mix have on render times. I like using it to fine tune lights, but am just curious as to how much affect using this has on final render times. I know it would vary per scene. But is there much point finalising the lights in a test render. Or is the difference so negligible that it doesn't really matter?   


2020-06-28, 21:02:01
Reply #1

TomG

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The rendering times aren't generally affected by much - it's the denoising times that go up, as each element has to be denoised individually. The only time a major impact would be seen is if the number of render elements cause you to run out of RAM, again this is something to watch for especially with denoising due to the data that needs to be stored for it for each pass.

Beyond that though, Corona is already doing the calculations for every light and how it bounces around the scene, and LightMix doesn't change that, just separates it out into render elements :)
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
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2020-06-28, 21:08:22
Reply #2

TomG

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PS - I should add, LightMix itself doesn't have a big impact, but, you may now be adding lights into the scene that you wouldn't without it; so before you may have had a night scene with no environment map outside and no sun but lots of interior lights, and a daytime with no interior lights and the hdri and sun, and now you will have all of those in the one scene (and possible extra suns, and extra HDRIs too!). Naturally, doing all those in one scene will be slower to render than the "just the nightime version" or "just the daytime version" because you are doing both at once (but naturally, easier to do them all at once than maintain two scenes and kick off rendering separately, and total render time of the two separate scenes would be pretty comparable to the one render time for the LightMix version).

The only other thing that may have an impact is if you choose to turn off Adaptivity for the LightMix, things may then be a little slower without it, but it will let the render calculations be more evenly shared between each light source rather than giving focus to particularly bright ones (which can be problematic when you turn off the bright ones to leave the dimmer ones). The other alternative there is to make each light source a very similar intensity, safe in the knowledge that you'll be doing the adjustments to intensity in LightMix anyway.
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2020-06-29, 21:05:44
Reply #3

PepperyTakumi

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Good to know! I will keep using light mix then, as you say, sometimes it can also save rendering an image twice. Thanks :)

2020-06-29, 21:20:36
Reply #4

TomG

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You are welcome! Or even save you rendering it 3 or 4 times :) Plus when the client comes back and asks for that light to be off, and can that interior one be a bit more blue-ish like LEDs, and can the sun be a little more yellow/orange - you just open up the CXR, tweak, and send it back to them (after 5 minutes, to show how awesome you are; or after 2 hours, to discourage them from asking for this kind of thing all the time ;) )
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
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