Rendering Issue

[aoswald]

Keyshot Version 6.1
Windows 7, 64 bit.
12 core network render

I am relatively new to Keyshot. So far I have rendered two animations showing product features – each took about 9 hours to render look good. The last animation has given me some trouble, however. Once I render the animation (or a still frame) the shadows appear pixelated (as shown in the before photo 12147). 

I was instructed to go to the advanced render setting and uncheck the "Global illumination Cache" setting. The good news is that this works to fix the shadows. The bad news is that the render now takes 200-300 hours for this 6 second orbit! It seems something is off here. Any insight is appreciated to get a nice looking render without the two week time frame. 

Photos: I have a before and after using the Global Illumination Cache to clean up the shadows.

Thank you

[Will Gibbons]

First, try updating your software to the newest 6.2 release.

Next, please list some details about what you're rendering.

What's the resolution?
How many frames per second?
How many seconds (if it's other than the 6 second animation you mentioned).
How many ray bounces in your scene?
Basically, any information regarding your output will help us help you.

[INNEO_MWo]

I'm sure that the render settings with max samples mode would speed up the render time. The question is, how many samples should be used.
And as Will wrote, there are many more parameters like ray bounces, shadow quality and frame rate, that will reduce the render time.

[aoswald]

I will update to 6.2. In the meantime below is some more information as well as some screenshots.

Resolution: 1920x1273
FPS: 30
Timeline: 6 seconds
Ray Bounces: 5

I had tried to move to max samples mode to cut the time, however in max samples mode I cannot adjust the Global Illumination Cache so the result was still pixelated.

Thank you for the help!

[INNEO_MWo]

The max samples mode will help, that every frame would be rendered in the same quality.
For better understanding maybe this webinar can help to understand:

As well the master series for animation from Dries shows very helpful tips to setup and output. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y49WyMct9CA&list=PL7j3sRRNC191l_bgps6QX1MT5T_a4YkxX&index=9

Try this:
- move the timeline cursor to a position nearly the frame from your first screenshot
- wait till live render mode has calculated an un-pixelated result with a good shadow quality (you can push the shadow parameter to 5 as the advanced render mode)
- look in the heads-up display to the samples value
- render a short sequence of your animation in your full resolution with max samples mode with this samples value


hope that helps

[Will Gibbons]

MWO has some good tips.

One thing I noticed, is that you've got Depth of Field on. that's significantly slow down your render time. Not sure by how much exactly but it wouldn't surprise me that if it would cut your render time in half.

From the KeyShot 6 Manual: Global Illumination Cache
Disabling GI Cache replaces the potential dirty shadows and black spots with noise. Increasing GI quality will reduce the noise. Increasing the samples will also help in reducing the noise.

So, you should be 100% able to get a clean image/frame quality by increasing samples and rendering in Max Samples mode. I personally would recommend this because using Advanced Rendering Output overrides your Realtime Render Settings.

Let us know if any of this helps. Also, you can probably drop your frame rate down to 24 fps (usually what TV is run at) and it'll be very smooth if you've enabled motion blur.

[aoswald]

Thank you everyone for your help, I will give this a try!