Posted on September 17, 2011
Huzzah! The long delayed dual and triple-screen versions of “Enshrouded” finally finished rendering last evening and are now available to my Members. In the end it took over 1000 hours (!) for the render to complete.
Why did it take so long? The tree models I used for this scene were designed to be used as “Hero” foreground objects, with only a handful recommended in a scene, yet I carelessly scattered hundreds of them about. What can I say? I don’t like low-res objects…
There are also multiple layers of “volumetric” clouds, each casting shadows on onto each other and the scene. The more you can see through the cloud (where the trees fade away) the longer it takes for the raytracer to process.
Yes, the scene would have taken a lot less time to render on Bucephalus but I really didn’t want to tie up my main machine for 2 weeks. Fortunately my old box (Hydra) chugged away faithfully in my basement and didn’t crash even once. Thanks old friend!