omino pixel blog

Here’s another tip for improving render speed. Don’t laugh, this actually does work.

Disable the computer’s “sleep if no user activity” timeout.

I had mine set for three hours, nice and green you know? (On Mac OS X, the control panel for this feature has a light bulb for its icon.) But it turned my 6 hour render into… well… I came home from work and it was still unfinished from the night before. Because the computer was sleeping.

Works for all render applications.

Thwok.

Now, as to why After Effects doesn’t tickle the Mac’s timout API to say “i am here, i am here” is a very very good question.

The puppet tool (in After Effects CS3) sure is neat. Like “bones” — common in many 3d programs — for 2d images. Great for expressive animation. Morphy!

And motion blur is one of my favorite flavors of ketchup. Up there with drop shadows and glow.

But yee, put them together and After Effects renders most terrible slow. My puppeted comp renders about 5 frames per second without motion blur, and about 5 seconds per frame with motion blur. So, say, a factor of 25 slower.

I wish I was posting something fun and exotic about scripts or halftoning or clever optical effects… but right now the issue of “render time” is using up all of my AE angst. But soon!

Executive summary: if you’re rendering a comp with particles, sometimes turning off “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” in Preferences:Multiprocessing can improve render speed bloody significantly. In my case, it went from 54 hours (or longer) to 4.

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