Adding Render Passes to Animation

[theAVator]

I'm curious about adding render passes when I render my animation frames - I typically don't use passes, but tossed around the thought that I might need to run a shadow pass on this one.

How do the passes affect render time? If i set it to render each frame for 3 minutes, does adding a pass double the time, or does it cut into that 3 min and reduce the overall render to make up for it? Typically, I queue up a group of frames using the max time setting because I can calculate how much time a set number of frames will run and can plan my render time over nights and weekends. But in this case, I need to know if I should expect it to take additional time and need to account for that in my frame breakdown.

Or... are the passes a bad idea or not possible in an animation?

Thx!

[Will Gibbons]

I'm curious about adding render passes when I render my animation frames - I typically don't use passes, but tossed around the thought that I might need to run a shadow pass on this one.

How do the passes affect render time? If i set it to render each frame for 3 minutes, does adding a pass double the time, or does it cut into that 3 min and reduce the overall render to make up for it? Typically, I queue up a group of frames using the max time setting because I can calculate how much time a set number of frames will run and can plan my render time over nights and weekends. But in this case, I need to know if I should expect it to take additional time and need to account for that in my frame breakdown.

Or... are the passes a bad idea or not possible in an animation?

Thx!

Good news! Passes don't add to render time. We need to calculate them for the final image anyway. The only thing I'd consider is the size of the data you can produce. You can create some large files if rendered as a 32-bit image with lots of passes as well.