rendering calculator

[dmcgrath]

I think I saw a script or plug-in at highend3d.com btu I'm sorry I cannot remember the name. Check in the rendering section there. Or you could do it the old fashioned way.

[dann_stubbs]

these really aren't necessary - first there is no way the computer can know how long each frame will take until it actually processes each frame.

so render an "average" complexity frame using your best judgement of your animation - take a caclulator and multiply that by how many frames you have - there is your estimate.

there are a couple reasons why the computer cannot predict the render time - all frames are not of equal complexity - for instance render a simple 1000 frame sequence of a sphere on a checkerboard floor - ok easy to estimate and the computers estimate in this case would be very accurate as it would take frame 1 times 1000 = total render time with minimal math done at frame 1

but put 1000 glass spheres with refraction on 1 frame of your animation and now your computer's "guess" it totally wrong - that one frame could take longer then the other 999 frames combined.

what most of these render estimators do is just do basic guessing math to arrive at their estimate they take the frame rendered and times it by total number of frames. then with every additional frame they render they add it to the previous frames and average it by dividing by the total of completed frames, then times by frames remaining. this is still not accurate explained by the previous scenario. in fact these can hurt your timelines because you may have the most complex frames at the end of a long render - so the computer goes along happily estimating this nice short render based on all the first frames it gets too - you feel great and happy the render will finish in 1 hour or whatever - then suddenly the computer starts upping your completion time from minutes to possibly multiple hours! how can this be! this damn computer is stupid! how can it say 1 hour for 55 minutes then suddenly jump to say 5 hours! i'm doomed, i'll never make deadline... aieeeee!!! (of course all added for dramatic effect)

there is a way for the computer to produce a pre render for each and every frame at a small resolution and then multiply these by a safe variable to estimate the time to produce the actual size frame and then multiply to produce the result - but... with your computer taking all that processing time just to produce the estimate you could have probably rendered 25% to 50% of the animation by then...

not many people would want to waste processing time on such a delay in obtaining the final rendered result...

so make it easy on yourself and the computer - use a calculator and your best judgement of an average frame time...

hope this helps shed a little light on it...

dann

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