"Passes" clarifier

[chris castelein]

Just to drop a note on the "passes" under More Settings..

this either should be clearer on the terminology as in:

"Terminate render after X passes"

(0 passes will not terminate)

OR

the on line help file should describe what this means (because it says nothing of any of the options under More Settings)

 

just thought i would try and help.

 

By the way, is 100 passes to save the rendering, the recomended number of passes? is that too many? just getting others thoughts.

 

Thanks

ccastelein

[Kevin Lockwood]

Depends on the rendering. I've been satisfied after only 20 passes on some simple exteriors. Interiors that use lots of lighting may take longer to resolve each light source.

On exteriors, I like to pause the render after several passes and save a tiff and a nxtimage format file, then resume rendering. I can use the saved files to start my post processes (landscape and lighting effects). Then later when I'm satisfied with the render, I just replace the base image.

Typically on a daytime exterior, I find its difficult to see much difference between a 20 pass or a 100 pass render.

[Peter Milner]

For interiors I run a render for anything between 150 and 3000 passes.
Pathtracer generally needs many more than the standard rendering engine.