I learned some beginner tips about Blender compositing and used them to denoise it even though I was on a low-end device. This was better than using lots of samples to avoid noise and taking ages to render.
(it still took half an hour)
I also experimented with a new technique using metaballs and volume displacement to make procedural clouds out of meshes.
As well as practising shader techniques to create that bubble material you see.
Also this was my first time using an HDRI to make a background instead of photoshopping a background in after the render.
Here is the version without the added motion Blur. Do you think it looks better?
Long render times are just a part of being an artist. Of Course you can try and optimise the scene but there’s really no point. The reason the is different to animations it that assets can be lower quality because the camera movement normally masks the lower quality. It a sacrifice we’re all taking.
If you want to feel better about your own render times, one of my more recent renders too 13 hours!
There is absolute no way something like this takes 30 minutes. May I ask, what was making the render times significantly longer? It’s very strange as things like this take me literally 5 seconds to render and a bit more if rendered in Cycles.
I’m guessing you’ve got a not quite good PC to handle Blender, but that’s alright since there are plenty of tutorials on how to speed up render times. I suggest lowering your render tile sizes like half and keep lowering it until you see a noticeable difference.
