How can you speed up 3D rendering?

1 Simplify your scene

One of the most obvious ways to speed up 3D rendering is to reduce the number of objects, polygons, and textures in your scene. The more detail you have, the more calculations your computer has to perform to render each pixel. You can simplify your scene by removing unnecessary or hidden elements, using low-poly models, applying level of detail (LOD) techniques, and using instancing or proxies for repeated objects. Simplifying your scene can also improve your viewport performance and make it easier to navigate and edit your 3D models.

2 Use smart lighting

Lighting is another crucial factor that affects 3D rendering speed and quality. Lighting can create realistic shadows, reflections, and colors, but it can also increase the render time significantly. To use smart lighting, you should avoid using too many lights, especially global illumination or ray-traced lights, which simulate the natural behavior of light. Instead, you can use baked or pre-rendered lighting, which stores the lighting information in texture maps and reduces the render calculations. You can also use light probes, which are spherical objects that capture the lighting of a specific point and apply it to nearby objects.

3 Optimize your materials

Materials are the properties that define how an object looks and reacts to light in 3D rendering. Materials can have various attributes, such as color, transparency, reflectivity, roughness, and bumpiness. However, some materials can be more demanding than others, especially if they have complex shaders or high-resolution textures. To optimize your materials, you should use low-resolution textures whenever possible, and compress them to reduce their file size. You can also use procedural textures, which are generated by algorithms and do not require image files. Additionally, you should avoid using transparent or reflective materials, which require more render calculations, and use simpler shaders or presets instead.

4 Adjust your render settings

Render settings are the parameters that control how your 3D software renders your scene. Render settings can have a huge impact on the render speed and quality, so you should adjust them according to your needs and preferences. Some of the most important render settings are resolution, anti-aliasing, samples, and render passes. Resolution is the size of your output image, and higher resolutions require more render time. Anti-aliasing is the process of smoothing the edges of your objects, and higher anti-aliasing levels produce sharper images but also increase the render time. Samples are the number of calculations per pixel, and higher samples reduce the noise and artifacts in your image but also increase the render time. Render passes are the layers of information that your 3D software generates for each element in your scene, such as color, depth, shadow, and reflection. Render passes can be useful for post-processing and editing your image, but they can also increase the render time and file size.

5 Use render farms or cloud services

Render farms are networks of computers that work together to render 3D scenes faster and more efficiently. Render farms can be either local or remote, and they can distribute the render workload among multiple machines. Render farms are especially useful for rendering large or complex scenes, or for rendering multiple frames for animation or video. However, render farms can also be expensive and difficult to set up and maintain. Alternatively, you can use cloud services, which are online platforms that offer 3D rendering as a service. Cloud services can provide you with access to powerful and scalable render servers, without the need to invest in hardware or software. Cloud services can also be more flexible and convenient, as you can upload your files, choose your render settings, and download your results from anywhere and anytime.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?