Render Quality and Performance

Changing the Pixel Samples allows you to increase or decrease the quality and render time of your image using antialiasing. The Pixel Samples parameter is located on the Sampling sub-tab of the Properties tab of the render node. The default setting is 3×3. If you decrease these values you will have a faster, lower quality render; if you increase these values you will get a slower, higher quality render. Changing the number of pixel samples is also useful for motion blur and depth of field.

Changing the Shading Quality is another way to alter rendering quality and performance. The Shading Quality parameter is located on the Dicing sub-tab of the Render tab of the object node. Altering the default value of 1 changes how much the object subdivides. Decreasing the amount of shading quality will speed up render time, but decrease the quality of your image. Increasing shading quality will slow down your render time, but increase the quality of your image.

See the Rendering Engines help for more information.

By default, Houdini uses all processors to speed up rendering time. If you do not want to use all processors you can turn off the Use Max Processors checkbox on the Render sub-tab of the Properties tab of the render node. Once this option is turned off, you can set the Thread Count to specify how many processors to use.