Documentation:Unix Section 8

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Speed Considerations

The following tips can help you increase the speed at which your images render. Most of the time, the increase will be marginal, but in a very long render (some users have renders that take several days) even a small increase can save a noticable amount of time.

Render Priority

The easiest way to change the priority across Unix systems is with the nice(1) command. The semantics vary from SVR4-based Unix to BSD-based Unix, so consult the manual page for instructions on usage.

Render Window

Rendering without display will also speed up things. If your render is writing a lot of text to a terminal window, either hiding it, or better still, minimizing the window(s), will help somewhat. Note that the effect that these actions have is generally directly related to the time it takes to render the file, and the resolution of the render. They have less effect on long renders, and more effect on very fast renders.

Memory

In general, the more memory you have (up to a point) the faster things will run, although this is not a direct effect, the less time Unix spends swapping things out to disk, the more time is available for your render.

Scene Features

Anti-aliasing, fog, halos, area lights, atmosphere ... all of these will cause your scene to require more time for completion. See the POV-Ray documentation for more details.

Render Quality

Consider using a lower quality setting if you're just testing your scene, and do not care about the quality of the output.

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