How long to render

[Black Sun]

I know it's an open ended question.... but how long should I render an image.
What I am asking is how long do you guys leave a render on... a few hours or all night?

I am asking cos I have an iMac and it gets red hot when I render so I want to keep render times to minimun.

Thanks.

[borisquezadaa]

Enough time so you are happy with.
I for instance NEVER let my renders (1280x720) more that 10-20 minutes for stills. And definitively less than 10 minutes top per frame for animation.
Is up to you.

[maru]

You can stop rendering when you think your image looks ok (for example when there is no visible noise or no aliased edges). There is no formula for this. Rendering time depends on the kind of scene you are rendering. You can also set Corona to stop rendering after a given number of passes or after given time (progressive renderer tab). Usually after some time the image will not change at all after each new pass - then you can consider rendering finished and stop it.

[Black Sun]

Thanks guys... I am abit relieved... I thought I would have to leave it for hours. 20 mins seems very good. I rendered my first image that took 15mins and it looked good.
Decided to apply better materials though and play more attension to the light.

[maru]

Feel free to experiment with Corona. It is one of the most intuitive renderers out there and if you screw some settings you can always revert to defaults. Nothing bad will happen if you let your image render for too long or too short. :)

[Black Sun]

Feel free to experiment with Corona. It is one of the most intuitive renderers out there and if you screw some settings you can always revert to defaults. Nothing bad will happen if you let your image render for too long or too short. :)

Manu... do you know if there are any settings you can change that create more interesting results with Corona?
Vray settings and changing them is well documented.... but I know nothing about the Corona dials and what they do.

[maru]

This might help:
https://corona-renderer.com/doc/

Also, this:
https://corona-renderer.com/wiki/start

And this for performance problems:
https://corona-renderer.com/wiki/performance_debugging

[Black Sun]

This might help:
https://corona-renderer.com/doc/

Also, this:
https://corona-renderer.com/wiki/start

And this for performance problems:
https://corona-renderer.com/wiki/performance_debugging

Helpful thanks. The first one is useful in explaining what the roll-outs mean.