flythrough specs needed

[cookepuss]

i am estimating how long it will take me to render out a 20 second flythrough at screen resolution of a fairly complex space.
You have to ask yourself if 20 seconds is enough. I did a 62 second flythrough a year or two ago. Even with the "luxury" of a full minute, I did feel that much of my creative freedom was being choked out of me. Plus, there's only so much you can show in 20 seconds. It'll be more like a zoomthrough.

would 800x600 be good enough for a presentation in large conference room projected onto the wall?
Depends on how far away the projector is. In some cases, you might be able to get away with standard NTSC resolution.

30 frames per second ok?
Should be. I assume that you're going from PC to projector, right? In that case, it's all a timing and physical render time thing. A valid case could be made for 24fps though, especially if your sending it to physical film.

if the scene runs out of memory when i try and render a still, is my life going to be hell trying to render an animation?
Probably. It depends on what you've got going on in your other frames. I was able to render out some nice stills, yet ran out of memory in my animation. I had to upgrade immediately. It could be the case that your chosen stills have more memory intensive stuff going on. If upgrading isn't an option, then you'll have to make some creative optimizations. Otherwise, you'll totally hit a wall whenever you hit those particular frames that give you trouble as stills.

EDIT>>> Obvious workaround. If you've got After Effects, you could always try rendering your scene in pieces and compositing it.

[MJV]

I recommend 640x480 at 15 fps.

[AdamT]

You can usually get away with less detail in a flythrough, and it sounds like you'll definitely need to.

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