Hey smart people
I'm working on a personal vr project.
The whole project is about The planet Saturn, but I've run into a problem with rendering volumes.
I've started to create the gas-storm on Saturn's north pole, but my render times are going through the roof.
This frame took 1 hours, and its not even close to finished.
At full res with spherical, it take almost 8 hours.
Could someone take a look at my scene?
I would just like to know if this is a realistic render time, or if I'm making all the mistakes on the planet.
Thanks
Gerbrand

Here are a few tweaks I did just to make it faster.

First bottom out your Mantra node to make it render as fast as possible. I included one of these in your reposted scene.

I reduced the volume quality down to 0.1 from 1.0. This is your Speed Vs. Quality value.

Now clone that Mantra node and start upping values.
I went into your materials and set all the densities to the same values, 2.
This may change your final look but I am tweaking for speed here.

I generally set my min samples equal to my pixel samples and set the max one more than that. Keep the noise level at 0.1, your setting of 1.0 essentially disables Ray Variance.

Stochastic sample values will help with the thin areas that pick up noise. I general turn that up higher if noise is a problem in transparencies.

Also switch to Physically Based Rendering.

Volumes are notoriously slow in any software package.

Thanks for taking the time to have a look Enivob.
Unfortunately your render is very noisy.
The moment I tweak the noise level or pixel sample to get rid of the noise, my renders are back to the 1 hour range.
I was hoping for a silver bullet that doesn't exist it seems.
Thanks
Gerbrand

I did take a look as well.

Chnage your ShadowType from RayTraced to Maps.
This will hugely affect your rendering times.

This wont work on the Enviroment Map, Turn Shadows of here.

Also if possible try to work with Pointlights - not Enviroment Lights.
You can get the blurry shadows in the Shadow Maps aswell.

This will help decreasing Rendertimes and allowing for more samples for less noisy renders.

wow !!
That made a difference.
Thanks so much for the pointers