I’m trying to learn maya rendering (using 2014) and I’ve come across an issue which I can’t see a solution for. I’ve set up a simple scene, a single object (mia_material_x_passes material) with a ground plane lit by physical sun and sky. If I render it without passes (1920x1080) it finishes in 48 seconds or so. If I add a single beauty pass and associate it with the render layer the render time doubles - I can’t see how this could take longer when there is only one pass being rendered, and it’s surely doing exactly the same as if there were no passes created? I’ve tried adding a group of other passes (diffuse/specular/ambient occlusion etc.) and the render time shoots up to 20 minutes or so. Does adding passes always slow down the render like this? or am I missing something. I’m not using any contribution maps because the scene is so simple.
mental ray passes extremely slow
just did some timings of the problem with the same scene, but created a render layer to put the objects in.
no passes - 0.59
with passes:
beauty - 2.08
- diffuse - 4.08
- specular - 6.10
- indirect - 6.15
- ambient occlusion - 29.59
obviously AO is significantly adding to the render time, but the beauty/diffuse/specular passes are all ~2minutes which implies that it’s doing a completely new render each time (rather than just saving the data as it proceeds). surely this can’t be right. I’ve got the Mastering Maya 2013 book, and it states:
“When render passes are created, each layer is rendered once, and the passes are taken from the data in the framebuffer… Render time for each layer increases as you add more passes.”
ok, but is the slowdown I’m seeing expected - or is it something I’m not setting up correctly? if anyone can help it would be appreciated.