At the end of the days, weeks, or even months that you spend working on a project in Rhinoceros, you have to render. Rendering is one of the most performance-intensive parts of the process though and can sometimes take a long time.

Whether you’re working on an architecture, animation, or product design project, knowing how to speed up rendering in Rhino 3D can be very helpful. Well, you’re in the right place for that. This guide will show you how to do that, through hardware tweaks, software settings, and more.

The Role of Hardware in Rendering Speed

The hardware that your desktop or laptop has inside plays a massive part in how fast your computer can render.

Your processor, or CPU, is in charge of most of the calculations involved in generating objects and their interactions, so a multi-core CPU, particularly with a fast clock speed, can help a lot. Your GPU, especially an Nvidia one with CUDA cores, can improve render speeds by quite a lot.

RAM is where files in active use are stored, so the more RAM you have, the larger the projects you can work on without hiccups. And SSDs are preferred over mechanical drives because they can load your projects a lot faster, which is most notable for big projects.

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Fine-Tuning Rhino’s Render Settings for Speed

You’re looking for how to render faster in Rhino and the best place to start is in the render settings for the application. 

Cycles Render Engine Adjustments

Just like Blender, Rhino uses the Cycles render engine. You get the option of CPU and GPU rendering, and if you’re using GPU rendering, opt for a larger tile size in your render settings, and use a smaller tile size for CPU rendering as your multiple CPU cores will handle all that work better together.

You can attempt to reduce the sample count for faster renders, though it results in a noisier final product. The same applies to bounces, which help with the realism of light and shadows in the scene. Fewer bounces result in a quicker render. These are some of the best settings for fast Rhino rendering, but you can find your own sweet spot.

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Using Denoisers

You have the option of AI-powered denoisers, which remove noise from rendered images without needing to spend substantially more time waiting for your renders. You can use the Package Manager to install Intel, Nvidia, or AMD’s Denoiser solutions.

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Scene Optimization for Better Performance

You’ve tweaked your render settings. Now, let’s talk about how you can adjust the things that are actually in your scene to reduce its graphical complexity and allow for faster renders.

Reduce Geometry Complexity

Rendering complex shapes with millions of polygons will certainly slow down rendering since there’s more to process. Low-poly models, a reduced mesh resolution, and simplifying the mesh via decimation techniques will help.

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Efficient Material Usage

Strive to use more basic shaders and lower-resolution textures, especially when you’re still working on preview renders. You can always apply the shaders and textures of your choice for the final render.

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Hide Non-Essential Geometry

Even objects that don’t appear in the camera boundaries will be processed during a render. This is why hiding or removing parts of the scene that aren’t visible can be a perk among those optimizing Rhino 3D for speed.

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Improve Lighting & Material Efficiency

A render is so much more power-hungry than viewing an object in the viewport because it does its best to accurately simulate how light behave in the scene you created. How it bounces off objects and the materials you chose, the shadows it casts, and the extent to which it illuminates, are all calculated. That means optimizing lighting can speed up renders. 

Lighting Techniques for Faster Rendering

The more light sources you have in a scene, the more processing that needs to be done. Where possible, reduce the light sources. Rhino supports High Dynamic Range Imaging maps and these can sometimes be very complex, so try to stick to simpler ones.

Finally, reducing the Global Illumination bounces, which is basically how many times light rays can bounce off objects in the scene, can be beneficial to your render times.

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Optimize Reflection and Refraction

In the real world, light bounces off surfaces and passes (to some degree) through others. The render engine in Rhino attempts to replicate that realistically. Removing unnecessary metallic, glossy, or other reflective materials can save you some minutes off your renders.

You can also disable reflections for smaller objects that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of your scene. That’s one less thing to process.

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Real-time Rendering and Post-production

Finally, there are some tricks you can apply to avoid rendering when it's not entirely necessary or to cut corners when it is. Let’s talk about them.

Use Viewport Previews

Rhino 3D is pretty cool because it offers the option for a rendered display mode in the viewport. Sure, using that mode is significantly more taxing than the regular shaded display mode, but it provides a way to quickly preview a scene or model without having to wait several minutes (or even hours!) for a full render to complete.

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Post-processing with Denoisers and Photoshop

One of the best Rhino 3D rendering tips involves dialing down the quality of the actual render that Cycles provides. You can reduce the number of samples, drop the number of bounces, and potentially even lower the resolution a little. The key is filling in the gaps in post-production. For instance, you can use a Denoiser after the fact or tinker in Photoshop to edit the image and make it look much better.

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Wrapping Up

Speeding up rendering in Rhino 3D is best achieved by combining several different tips, whether it is optimizing your hardware, tweaking render settings, simplifying the complexity of your scenes, or taking advantage of post-processing. With all of these combined, you can likely shave a lot of time off your renders.

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The best way to find which of these tips work for you is to try them out. Once you do, you’ll be closer to finding the perfect rendering setup for you. And with one of Vagon’s cloud computers, you don’t even need to worry about the hardware part, since there’ll be plenty of power at your fingertips by default.

FAQs:

1. What are the best settings for faster rendering in Rhino 3D?

   • Adjusting tile size, reducing sample count, and minimizing bounces are among the top settings for quicker rendering in Rhino 3D.

2. How does hardware affect Rhino 3D render speeds?

   • Hardware such as a multi-core CPU, a high-performance GPU, ample RAM, and SSD storage can significantly reduce rendering time.

3. Can I use denoisers to improve render quality without extra rendering time?

   • Yes, AI-powered denoisers from Intel, Nvidia, or AMD can clean up noise in renders quickly, reducing the need for longer render times.

4. Does simplifying scene geometry help in rendering faster?

   • Absolutely! Using low-poly models and simplified meshes reduces the load on the rendering engine, resulting in quicker render times.

5. How can lighting adjustments speed up my Rhino 3D render?

   • Minimizing the number of light sources, using simpler HDRI maps, and reducing global illumination bounces can improve render speeds.

6. What is the benefit of using Vagon's cloud computers for Rhino rendering?

   • Vagon’s high-performance cloud computers offer powerful hardware, allowing for faster rendering without the need for costly upgrades on your local machine.