mentalray on strike ?

[myself44]

Hi
I've encountered a problem since a while which is when I hit the render button, the status line says "Translating frame 1" and the render just sits there for 4 or 5 mins then, it starts "mentralray computing final gather rays"...
It takes even 5 to 10 second to abort the render.
I dont get it, what my render has to do with 'frame' if it's only a still image, not animation. How can I get rid of that
I've never seen that before
Thx

[olblue]

you probably have final gather enabled - is it your own scene file or one you downloaded? Press F10 and in the renderer panes uncheck Final Gather as well as Caustics and Global Illumination if they are selected.

[myself44]

Yes well, it's my own scene and Im using FG to render. So the translating thing is related to FG? I also noticed that the less object I have in my scene, the less 'translating' time it takes.
But what is that translating frame? Is this needed even if im rendering still image.

[olblue]

its calculating physical light based on the lights in your scene, your materials and your objects - so depending on both the complexity of your scene and the power of your computer, it can take a VERY long time - consider if you will that in an animation it would have to recalculate this 30 times per second as well.

This is why people talk about horrible rendertimes in CGTalk so frequently

Cris

[Glacierise]

Mental ray is in fact very fast. Too long render times are caused dominantly by poor settings. Post your scene, I can help.