Render time allowance, Please comment!

I was thinking a bit about the render of our animation. This is a community project with no funding, so we can't afford to hire a render farm to render our animation. But we don't need to at this point. The current average render time per frame is 15 seconds but that depends on whats in the camera's view of course. The final script has 6.7 minutes, 402, seconds, or 10,050 frames for the story. That brings out the total render time to be about 41 hours!!!!! thats PUNY for any animation! If we spread the render across say 3-6-ish PCs, we could render that in one day. But it being that fast, means we could either
1) keep it the was it is, and render it in one day, OR
2) add some eyecandy, like effects with render nodes, approximated ambient occlusion, etc.

I personally think it's always a good ideas to add pretty stuff, but we need to discuss on how much we will add, or rather, what we should constrain our render times to.

whip out a calc, and use the number 18,000 as our Frames to Render. thats to count in titling, and credits.

so, (pardon my thinking out loud)

T=Render Time Per Frame;
E=Total Animation Render Time;
T*18,000=E

I created a spread sheet with functions so that it will automatically calculate that formula. So when i gave it an render time per frame allowance of 60 seconds, it resulted in a total of 1,080,000 minutes or 12.5 days. is that too long?is it worth it? What are y'alls thoughts on that?

i got a pretty nice i7-920 quad processor coming on the 23rd, so perhaps it could be a bit faster - unless all i am showing is my ignorance about what determines render speed.

I think we should add some eye-candy, but 12 day render time? I think K is worth every second for the time he has put in, but lets make sure we really add to the film and not just throw in stuff because we can.

I don't have a problem with it if the team doesnt.

Myrmedon

with that kind of CPU, the render time would increase at least 5 times with some over clocking! Then, if you are willing to leave a render running 24 hours till it's done, that would cut out (very) roughly some 40% i think. that would be very nice!

Edit, to compare your own possible render times to mine, i have a single core though it is 3.4GHZ.

(edit2ed the times the render time increases to a more realistic number)

So it appears we have enough powerful PCs, provided that their owner are willing to sacrifice them for some time for this render. Jon (Myrmedon) has a kicker CPU coming next week, Lyle has a gaming rig with a 3.6 if i understand correctly, and i myself have access to (not mine) rather powerful software development rig with tons of RAM, CPU and and a 64x architecture. Dunno if i can get at it, but there are chances.

I've got a dual core PC, probably not all that fast in comparison to others, but it does set idle most of the time while I'm asleep and at work, probably 15 to 20 hours a day, that I would gladly use as rendering time.

My personal opinion is that as much work as will go into a project like this, I think it should be as "pretty" as we can make, within reason of course.

Also, if we don't have a deadline for this project, I don't suppose it really matters if the final renderings take two days or two weeks.

That's just my thoughts, but I'll be happy with what everyone else decides, I'm just happy to be here!

probably faster than mine though, so i guess that confirms that we got plenty render power. But still, not much has been said about how long we can render it.
It's not a law of the Medes and Persians, but it would be real nice if we could release it by September 2. read why here: http://forums.blendernewbies.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1163&p=6779&hilit=anniversary#p6779 (and check out my second post, WOOOOHOOO! )

for now, lets definitely keep the render time per frame below 2 minutes cause that gives a total of 25 days total!

here's the chart

It's a dynamic open office spreadsheet. add a number to test, it calcs the rest. if anyone wants to mess with it, just lemme know and I'll host it.