Blender is an open-source 3D modeling and animation software that is widely used by animation artists, product designers, and game creators. Not only does it allow users to create 2D objects or characters and animate them to obtain 3D models, but Blender also has a strong community of artists and computer scientists constantly improving the code to deliver powerful software without the hefty price tag, helping users discover how to render faster in Blender. For those just starting out, there’s a comprehensive guide for Blender 3D beginners that can help you get up to speed with the software.

Many creators and professionals are creating content and publishing courses in the Blender community to help others adopt Blender into their workflows. However, beyond its popularity, Blender still has one major drawback: It can take a long time to render projects when finalizing an intensive project.

Blender can use your computer’s central processing unit (CPU), graphics card (GPU), or both for rendering. To eliminate render wait times, consider investing in multi-core processors and GPUs with a high CUDA core count.

Image by Lennart Demes from Pixabay

Before you go out and buy expensive upgrades to your existing hardware, here are a few suggestions to help you minimize your rendering times.

Tip #1: Reduce Samples

While using as many samples as possible allows Blender to create clearer images and models, each new sample means another second to work on rendering it.

By limiting the number of samples, you can greatly reduce your rendering time, making Blender render faster and optimizing your render settings for faster results.

Keep in mind that obtaining fewer samples will affect the quality of the final product, so it’s best to use this method for web-only projects instead of those that require viewing on larger screens.

Tip #2: Do Selective Rendering

An easy way to speed up the rendering process in Blender is to stop rendering the entire image and start rendering only the region of the image that interests you most at that specific moment. You can do this by pressing Shift + B and dragging on the camera window. This marquee selection tool will ensure that only that particular area is rendered. This approach can help you achieve a faster render in Blender by focusing on what's essential.

Tip #3: Optimize the Tile Size

Tiles are small black boxes that appear on the screen when Blender is rendering the scene.

Tile size is an important factor to minimize your rendering times and optimize Blender's fast render settings.

Increasing the number of tiles will make the tile size smaller, allowing the system to focus on a smaller portion of your scene. All cores work on the render until it’s finished, without one core finishing before another. Optimizing the tile size will minimize your rendering time.

Blender has always been capable of increasing the number of tiles, but with recent code updates, you can also change the tile sizes. GPU can only render one tile at a time, while CPU renders multiple tiles at a time, so optimizing tile size is more effective with a CPU.

Tip #4 Disable Shadows

Shadows and other visual effects require more processing time when rendering. If your project has too many effects and shadows, the rendering time will be longer than expected.

If the shadows in your project are not fundamental, you can disable them to improve rendering duration.

Tip #5: Focus On Your Scene

What appears in the rendered image should correspond to the “physical” work done to create the set. It is useless to model objects, create materials, and set lights for parts of the project that will not be displayed in the render. This strategy helps reduce render time in Blender and makes Blender render faster by concentrating resources on what matters most. If the project includes multiple images from different points of view, plan the images as in a storyboard.

Don’t improvise. For each render, list the point of view, the props, the necessary materials, the finishes, the technical details, and the critical aspects you can foresee. This phase will save you time in the execution of this project and in future ones.

Tip #6: Speed Up Your Rendering with Vagon

When the goal is to cut down rendering times, every second saved is a victory. But what if you could do more than just save a few seconds?

With Vagon’s cloud PCs powered by 48 cores, 4 x 24GB RTX enabled Nvidia GPUs and 192GB of RAM, watch your Blender projects render faster than ever. It’s easy to use, right in your browser. You can transfer your workspace and files in just a few clicks and try it yourself!

Tip #7: Adjust Clamp Values

Indirect and Direct Clamp values are settings you can balance between render output quality and render duration. While both Clamp values reduce noise over light bounced samples to increase image accuracy, direct clamp affects the pixels that have not bounced yet, and indirect clamp affects the pixels that have bounced multiple times. Adjusting these values can help you achieve a faster render in Blender Cycles by balancing quality and speed.

Tip #8: Enable Adaptive Sampling

It’s not as new and popular as Cycles X, but last year Blender released Adaptive Sampling in Blender 2.83 to reduce rendering times by reducing sample sizes for complex scenes. By using Adaptive Sampling, you can efficiently distribute processing power.

Just go to the Samples tab in Blender and check the Adaptive Sampling checkbox.

Tip #9: Activate Denoising

Denoising is another way to reduce rendering times. If you have an OptiX compatible GPU, you can activate Denoising to increase image quality by decreasing the noise in your render output. The OptiX engine uses AI to remove noise from your image.

You can check the Denoising parameters in the official Blender guide. To activate Denoising, go to the Denoising tab in Blender and adjust your settings according to your output preferences.

Tip #10: Use the Render Layers

Blender offers Render Layers as a tool to help manage complex scenes. Proper use of this tool allows you to modify and render only the relevant parts of your 3D scenes, bypassing long waiting times.

Tip #11: Switch to GPU Rendering

The GPU, designed primarily for fast image creation, uses a graphics card for rendering. While CPU and GPU rendering are similar in how they are handled, the GPU is much more powerful and can process instructions of many cores simultaneously. This can significantly speed up Blender render times, making Blender render faster and optimizing performance.

The use of CPU and GPU rendering depends on specific needs. The architectural industry may benefit from CPU rendering, which takes longer but generates higher quality images. In contrast, industries focused on managing complex, graphics-intensive processing, virtual reality, and AI innovation, such as animation, film, and product design, may benefit more from GPU rendering, especially when using Blender on a cloud computer.

You can switch your Blender Render Settings by going into Preferences > System > Cycles Render Devices and switching from CPU to GPU.

Tip #12: Remove Unnecessary Polygons

A polygon in 3D modeling refers to a filled, closed shape. Not all scenes need the highest quality settings. For example, scenes that are blurry or focus on a distant object require less intricate information, meaning you can drop unnecessary polygons and reduce render duration.

This approach, known as Level of Detail (LOD), is often used in game development, and there are various techniques to optimize game assets in Blender to ensure they render quickly without compromising quality.

Tip #13: Deactivate Ray Tracing

Ray tracing, essential for creating realistic lighting, is resource-intensive and can drastically increase render times. If you’re on a tight schedule, this can be problematic.

If you’re using Cycles, you can’t turn off ray tracing; it’s an inherent part of how Cycles work. However, the older Blender internal renderer uses scanline rendering instead of ray tracing, allowing you to disable ray tracing to speed up rendering, though this would result in entirely black images in Cycles.

You can disable ray tracing globally in the Render menu’s Shading panel.

Tip #14: Disable Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion (AO) is used to create soft shadows in a scene, particularly valuable for indirect lighting. However, implementing AO requires many hours of rendering. Disabling AO can save time if the scene doesn’t need indirect shadows. You can use the AO pass instead to achieve a similar effect without slowing the rendering process.

Tip #15: Improve Speed By Checking the CPU Cores

It’s easy to overlook the processes running in the background when rendering. You can speed up the rendering process by halting all unused processes and plugins. It’s crucial to note which features you can do without. For example, disable the motion graphics if you don’t need motion blur.

Minimizing features and applications frees up extra power for rendering, saves time by decreasing render duration, and prevents applications from unexpected crashes and issues. This is particularly crucial if you need to use Blender on a low-end device, where every bit of processing power counts.

Tip #16: Disable Unnecessary Features And Programs

It’s easy to overlook the processes running in the background when rendering. You can speed up the rendering process by halting all the unused processes and plugins. It’s crucial to note which features you can do without. For example, disable the motion graphics if you don’t need motion blur.

Minimizing the features and applications frees up extra power for rendering and saves time by decreasing the render duration, and prevents application from unexpected crashes and issues.

Tip #17: Activate Blender’s Persistence Data

When you click the render button, the system calculates and caches the first frame of your scene. The following frames depend on the cached information from the first frame, meaning your scene’s components are no longer recalculated in every frame, drastically improving your rendering speed.

Persistent Data works great for still scenes like interior architectural renderings but doesn’t yet support caching animated objects and increases memory consumption. You can activate this feature by heading to Render Properties, selecting the ‘Performance’ tab, then the ‘Final Render’ subtab, and selecting ‘Persistent Data’.

Tip #18: Reduce your Cycles X Sampling Count

Sampling is a render option in the Cycles X rendering engine that determines the number of light computations required to render a scene. As the sample count increases, the precision of the light calculations improves, resulting in a cleaner render but also an increased render time. Adjusting sampling is crucial for those wondering how to reduce samples in Blender and achieve faster renders.

Having a higher sample count is usually beneficial, but there’s a point where more samples are barely noticeable. Conducting a performance test will help determine the best sample count for clean and fast renders.

In Blender 3D, you can configure the most samples, least samples, noise threshold, and time limit.

Navigate to Render Properties > Sampling > Render to adjust the sample counts. Set the Max Samples value to 500 samples and increase until satisfied with the quality of the render.

Tip #19: Decrease the Number of Light Bounces

Light bounce rate is set at the maximum level by default for better image quality. However, it doesn’t always need to be at this level. If you have the flexibility to decrease light bounces, it will make a difference in your project’s rendering times. This adjustment is one of the key strategies in Blender to render faster by reducing unnecessary light calculations.

Infinite light bounces mean infinite light reflections in your project, but you can manually decrease this value in your Blender render settings to reduce your rendering times.

FAQs:

1. How can I reduce render time in Blender?

   • Learn various techniques to decrease render time in Blender, from optimizing settings to using powerful hardware.

2. What are the best practices to make Blender render faster?

   • Discover best practices like reducing samples, optimizing tile size, and using GPU rendering to speed up Blender.

3. How does switching to GPU rendering affect Blender's performance?

   • Understand the benefits of GPU rendering and how it can significantly speed up rendering times in Blender.

4. What are the most effective Blender settings for faster rendering?

   • Explore which settings in Blender can be adjusted to achieve faster rendering without compromising quality.

5. How do I optimize Blender for rendering on a low-end device?

   • Get tips on how to tweak Blender settings to improve rendering performance on less powerful hardware.

6. Can I render animations faster in Blender?

   • Find out how to reduce rendering times for animations in Blender with efficient techniques and settings adjustments.