Foam render times are so large !

[stevesideas]

I've checked out various youtube videos with people stating minutes for renders but the renders I have are taking absolutely ages !

I have a bunch of particles below the ocean surface which are not actually visible so is there a way to not render those ?

Is it possible to render the point foam in scanline ?

Any help to speed things up really appreciated as I need this done by tomorrow morning !

[Ivaylo Katev]

you can use the subgroup option to select only the particles above the water to be renderable, however this is rarely used, because the foam under the water is important for the good results
about the point shader and scanline, yes it can be used with scanline
i'm sure your scene can be accelerated, my firs and most important advice - do not use GI. if you need GI for another objects, you have to use compositing. currently you can't exclude the foam form the GI calculations effectively, even if you disable accept/generate GI on the foam object, it changes only the result but not the render times. we are working on this, but for now the compositing is the only real option.

[stevesideas]

Yes. I realised GI was causing a lot of issues. With the file I have sent you I don't seem to be able to use scanline. Max crashes as soon as I switch over. Not sure if it is something to do with the material editor or the main scene. Not sure why I am expeirencing so many problems.

Thanks, by the way for all the help so far.

[Ivaylo Katev]

perhaps you have some vray object left in the scene (light or sky texture , i don't know)
as i understand you have several problems, and very short time to do this. your simulation is not form the easiest ones, i will try to prepare the basic setup, but i will do it with the flip solver, so you have to download nightly build. you are writing not in the public section, so you should be a customer, ask the support for nightly build access.

[stevesideas]

The scene set up is done. I've managed to bring render times down. For this particular animation I will not be using refraction as it just takes too much time. That will be fine for this animation. So don't worry about setting up another scene. The only issue I have now is the error that keeps coming up.

[Ivaylo Katev]

which error, you mean the scanline crash?

[stevesideas]

The error message that occurred when I was trying to do a normal vray render. I sent the file to support to look at.

[Ivaylo Katev]

as i understand svetlin is already working on it, and you have a workaround, keep us in touch