How to reduce your Arnold render time in Maya up to 50%

[@Mickiecp]

I'm coming over from 3DS Max to Maya after being away from 3D for 5-6 years. Your videos are very helpful and much appreciated! :)

[@Krentiles]

Nice I didn't realize I could tweak samples in lights. Big thanks and stay healthy.

[@MHTutorials3D]

Thank you

[@Nj86743]

With Arnold and Maya what I have noticed after working on many projects is that Arnold sucks bigtime when it comes to rendering foliage, fur grass and hair passes.. also the scene had transparency, displacement and some heavy 4k - 6k textures. Add SSS shaders and render time increases again. With the dome light and hdri maps the render times shoot up like crazy with arnold rendering. Over the last few years I have done many tests with different values and possibilities on various projects (CG vfx and commercials) but wat I experienced is that the artifacts are still there , mostly with the GI ON(diffuse) and the rendertimes always go up drastically with GI on. I couldn't go below AA samples of 6-8 for the hi quality render in HD resolution. So the solution that I took is that I've switched to vray next & redshift. The rendertimes dropped drastically and the quality was much better. So, I have made it a thumb rule never to use Arnold for any of my personal projects, and only on production as the companies can afford to have good render blades and workstations. If we are working on our own work then Arnold is not at all advisable, with a very complex scene with, hell lotta elements and limited resources.

[@Kopite369]

I wish there were more videos like this a big thank you Mike! that has helped me no end please keep them coming. Stay safe mate!

[@MHTutorials3D]

Thanks so much Alan, much appreciated. Stay safe and healthy my friend !

[@sandipanchakraborty6720]

Just yesterday I rendered a whole scene and it took 4 hours to render just one frame.... (I have a potato pc)...... I wish you I could find the video earlier..... Thanks MH, that helps a lot......😇

[@MHTutorials3D]

Well, it's here now :-)

[@OlehBilov]

Thanks! My pc was rendering single 1920x822px frame for 8 minutes 46 secs. Now render time is 3 min 41 secs with an appropriate quality!

[@MHTutorials3D]

That is great

[@EXO57]

This is not a trick, you have a worse render at the end compared to the render with 12 to AA. So of course you will reduce the render time if the render is worse ... The goal of a video for reducing the time is to still have a good render in less time no ?

[@ikechukwunwanah4902]

what a time saver! Thanks a lot Mike

[@lgtwzrd]

Thanks for the tip! I managed to half my render time (MID RENDER!) and I can't even tell the difference from one frame to the next. The slight file size increase (58kb) suggests there might be a little more noise in there but it's imperceptible to the eye for my project at least. Much appreciated!

[@Wimpy85FTW]

Hmm so I think this is useful in many ways but I think you should have added that this mainly works on simple renders. Usually in a normal scene you’d have the lights on 6 samples as well as the AA at 5 or more. I was really hoping on cutting down a fluid sim in half but that’s ok, still great job this trick is super useful on simpler renders.

[@kapwinng]

Fantastic and awesome as always. Hope all is going well with you

[@CreepyStories433]

I rendered an "run" animation and it took me 7 hours thx for this reminder, good to know

[@MHTutorials3D]

Hopefully things will go faster now

[@arcitek66]

I was pretty excited to try this on my interior archviz scene. I did not really get the best results trying to only upsample the lights. I still had to bump up my Camera AA to 6. My Camera AA without bumping up the light samples was 6 and took 2:46 to render with a decently clean rendering. I tried dialing back Camera AA to 3 and then upsampling all of my lights to 6. The rendering took 1:32 to render but quality was not great. Maybe this is not a good approach for archviz. However, I will say I do use upsampling on my lights in combination with my Camera AA settings so there is a benefit there. For arch viz, a better approach to shave some time would possibly be not to just crank up the Camera AA. Figure out where the noise issue actually is occurring and only ratchet up those areas in the AA settings. When solely relying on Camera AA, that number is being multiplied to ALL other AA and sampling numbers. Another trick could be to not mess with Camera AA too much, turn on Adaptive Rendering and use the AA Samples Max to deal with the areas really needing more AA. I am always looking for ways to cut down rendering time so there are grains of usefulness in all of this.

[@MarcoStillSeasonsCattaneo]

Video is preatty basic and shows really nothing worth of note. Sadly Arnold is really a pain when comes to interior scenes, so learning it very well is mandatory.

[@oscarcampbellhobson]

Just started this so I don’t know if he includes it but you need to use standins

[@gianclaudiomorando2392]

Hello there. Why it doesn't work on my scene? I mean, when I increase my aiPhotometricLigtht (with IES file) samples the render isn't change in terms of grain. Thanks for your channel Mike :)

[@MCfatal971]

Thank you very much for the reasonable rendering time. I was using a Denoiser + GPU

[@Kumar-bg6nr]

Hey Mike! hope you're doing well ! I've got a video request for you. Can you please make a video on texturing big environments in maya (ex. huge ground, mountains, roads etc)? Thanks!

[@abiyyupanggalih854]

Wow so exited🔥

[@MHTutorials3D]

Hope you enjoy it

[@abiyyupanggalih854]

@@MHTutorials3D thankyou for sharing sir👌

[@MHTutorials3D]

@@abiyyupanggalih854 You are very welcome

[@Imran400e]

My rendering is taking too much time.... I searched many videos so found that my gpu isn't working in maya so how to i enable the gpu in maya

[@er.Surbhi_Rahul]

Hey Mike, my render scene is quite big and already getting 4+ minutes time to render. can you please help to reduce render time per frame?

[@MHTutorials3D]

Do you have glass or chrome ( reflection / refraction ) in your scene ? Do you have caustics ?

[@RaphpowerSGSUModding]

Why not using a denoiser ? It works great on HD images

[@bettlebug5988]

Hello Mike Hermes, I appreciate your tutorials. Can you help me with Maya lagging animation. It takes 15 seconds to move from frame to frame and when I stop the animation it takes the same amount of time. I have tried to see what I could find but nothing. I have a Dell G3.

[@aviv32]

is there any way to increase and lower threads on hypershader?

[@JayGrapherTh]

is this a technique when also rendering out the final frames/video as well or is this mainly for real time working on the project?

[@TRSDTRSD]

Hi Mike, first congratulations for your work. It's incredible the way you explain maya. I have a question, how can I render i mental ray with gpu. I have a gtx 1050ti but when I render something, the graphic card doesn't move. In Nvidia panel I think I have the correct configuration. Can you please help me to accelerate my mental ray renders? Thank you!

[@alzate_3d]

Este puede ser el primer acercamiento a una escena sin materiales complejos como transmisión + SSS. Debido que no siempre lo que percibimos de ruido se origina del mismo lugar.

[@TheDorianTube]

Hey guys, but what happened to Redshift? I thought it was going to explode since you can render stuff in a very short time. However people don't talk about it that much.

[@MHTutorials3D]

Because Maya Arnold can GPU render too

[@TheDorianTube]

@@MHTutorials3D Really? Woah, but it was always a thing or it's a new feature?

[@MHTutorials3D]

@@TheDorianTube It's been around in Arnold lighting for a while :-)

[@TheDorianTube]

@@MHTutorials3D oh, I stopped with Maya 2016/2017, was it there too? If it was I'm going to cry ahahah

[@MHTutorials3D]

@@TheDorianTube I think Maya 2018 was the first version with Arnold as the standard.....

[@joed6850]

Nice video. Does the light's resolution only apply if using and HDRI?

[@MHTutorials3D]

Mostly

[@SkifNomadcat]

Thank you, mate! It's actually working!

[@MHTutorials3D]

It should :-)

[@waynesun3835]

how about using GPU render ?

[@MHTutorials3D]

I did not want to do that as that would give me un unfair advantage ( I have a very good GPU )

[@waynesun3835]

@@MHTutorials3D Ok,but I'll be excited about how fast the GPU could be

[@MHTutorials3D]

@@waynesun3835 1 second

[@Kata-oy4gl]

I really thought increasing light samples will increase the quality so the render time but I think I was wrong tjx for the information sir !

[@1Obi1]

It does, but when Mike increased the light samples, at the same time he decreased all the sample values in the render settings, which resulted the lower render time. This trick works for a simple scene like this, because the noise is mainly from the lights, but if you have a scene with SSS materials for example, you gonna have to have high samples sizes for that if you want better quality, the increased light samples won't cut it.

[@MarcoStillSeasonsCattaneo]

Sorry but this isn't a recommended video. Shows some principles that are the base on how to use Arnold, sold as "tip", plus showing couple of steps that are completely wrong (AA samples to 12 without any DOF or Motion blur just to clean overall noise is nonsense, no wonder render times are huge). Just learn how Arnold's sampling works , then this video will be preatty useless

[@martinarosati242]

Thank u Mike. You are the best ever !!!

[@andreankuna3008]

hi, thanks for the lessons, please do a tutorial on wrinkles that use normal maps and attaching them to a controller arnold renderer.

[@walhamarwen9273]

Thanks mike but that 12 in camera AA is far than enough so 225sec is not the real AA Timing since it's abused. iF you just give it 5(AA) 4 Diffuise = render will be better quality with no noise and optimised timing. Not saying is the best solution since each scene have it's on configuration but you can't be comparing over rated 12(AA)/ to make an optimised render (y)

[@raafatwali6060]

THANK YOU MIKE

[@tomdemojo45]

Brilliant, thanks

[@nestorrios9703]

it will save me time doing rendering like always thank you very much

[@MHTutorials3D]

Thank you as always Nestor !

[@harshadthasal8017]

please make video vray render . how to do good quality render Maya vray but in less time ??????

[@crrc77]

I like watching and listening to you. Very well explained videos.

[@EdgyEmoLoliconBoy]

All I need to know is your Processor

[@MHTutorials3D]

i7 12 core Intel

[@HelionDark]

light sample works great ! tnx

[@MHTutorials3D]

Glad it helped!

[@mayurdawange4466]

This was helpful... Thanks

[@baticeering]

thank you mike!

[@MHTutorials3D]

Very welcome

[@harun3Ddigitalartist]

thank you...

[@Yakinwusi7]

Saved me thank you

[@EdgyEmoLoliconBoy]

Omg Just what I needed!!! Considering I have an i7 6700HQ

[@MHTutorials3D]

That's cool, I hope it helps

[@brandonthepinocchioVIBES123321]

You look a bit like Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad.

[@dasari_malleshbadra1822]

Good one

[@Propilot_33]

Funny... In this tuto it's the lights samples to reduce the render time. In another tuto, it's the camera AA..... When I use both of this techniques on my own render, it's ending up taking the same amount of time, wich is always a lot.....

[@ronydey2696]

great sir

[@greenland7893]

Great

[@ImTyzn]

I love you

[@arpatupuropo]

really? that was a very very rookie tutorial