reducing render time for wispysmoke shader?

[Guest ravin]

I have a particle network with spheres copied onto it. An isoOffset node is appended to the spheres and I have applied a wispy smoke shader. It is taking me 1.73 minutes to render one frame of 320 x 240 resolution on a 64bit, Intel Core i7, 8 GB(ram) machine . On frame 1 I am emitting 5000 particles and then I have a constant birth rate of 5000 particles. I am also calculating the distance from the camera and determining the opacity of the smoke shader based on the distance of the particle from the camera. The settings on my shader are:

Smoke density: 1

Shadow density: 10

Frequency: .2 .2 .2

Wispiness: 0.3

Self shadowing is turned on. I am using a Spotlight with Depth map shadows turned on. Shadow intensity on the light is 0.5. Pixel Samples are 1x1. There is no depth map motion blur.

Setting on mantra node : I have motion blur turned on and Pixel Samples are 3x3 and volume step size 0.1.

I have following queries:

1. Is there any way I can reduce my render time without loosing the quality much?

2. How Can I breakup the render into beauty and shadow passes?

3. Also what parameters will give me more details on the dust?

thanks,

[Ratman]

One thing you can do, on your ROP node, start playing with your Volume Step Size, bring it up to 2 or 4 and render that, you'll be loosing detail, but it'll increase rendering speed.

From there you can work on trying to find a compromise. I usually have my light shadow parameters default, except for Resolution and Pixel Samples, usually have 1k map and 2x2.

Also you might want to look into using the pyro shader if you want to add some more noise detail your volumes.

[Guest ravin]

One thing you can do, on your ROP node, start playing with your Volume Step Size, bring it up to 2 or 4 and render that, you'll be loosing detail, but it'll increase rendering speed.

From there you can work on trying to find a compromise. I usually have my light shadow parameters default, except for Resolution and Pixel Samples, usually have 1k map and 2x2.

Also you might want to look into using the pyro shader if you want to add some more noise detail your volumes.

Can I use the pyro shaders on particles? If yes then can you show me a simple example on how I can do that?

thanks,