3D Render Calculator

Our 3D render calculator is a useful tool if you want to estimate the rendering time of your animation project or anything else for that matter. Whether you are working on a large scale or personal project, this calculator will help answer questions like:

• When will my render be complete?
• How many machines do I need to finish by a particular deadline?
• What is the maximum allowable render time per frame to finish by my deadline?

Browse through the examples below to see how it works. While you're waiting for the render, check out the video frame size calculator to estimate how large your uncompressed video file will be after rendering. If you're going to add some sound, there's the audio file size calculator, too.

To calculate how long it takes to render a video, follow these steps:

1. Write down the time it takes to render one frame. This is the time per frame.
2. Write down the total number of frames in the movie.
3. Count the number of machines that will be rendering this project.
4. Replace them in the following formula: total render time = time per frame × frames / machines.

Let's say you've finished setting up a short animation clip and have started the rendering process. The first three frames take roughly 15 min each, and you have 50 frames in total. How long will it take?

In this example, to calculate render time, make sure the radio button points to the calculation of the total render time. Then, type 15 min into the Time per frame field and 50 into the Number of frames.

This should take 750 minutes, or 12.5 hours, to finish rendering everything if you entered one for the number of machines (i.e., a computer) rendering the project. If you have multiple machines running, increase the Number of machines count as appropriate. The Total render time will be divided by the number of machines based on the assumption that each machine contributes the same amount of processing power.

For projects where both time and the number of machines are limited, or for previewing and editing scenes, you may decide to reduce the render quality (e.g., by lowering the resolution or reducing the number of samples) to shorten the render time per frame. For this to be successful, use the 3D render calculator to determine what render time per frame will allow you to meet the deadline.

For example, if you have 50 frames, 2 machines, and you need to finish in 8 hours, follow these steps to calculate the render time per frame:

1. Set Number of frames to 50.
2. Set Number of machines to 2.
3. Specify the Total render time as 8 hrs.

The answer would be 19.2 minutes per frame. You can then use this value to adjust your render settings so that you can meet your target. To help decide what resolution would be appropriate for your target screen size, check out the pixels per inch calculator.

Another helpful hint: if you don't know how much time is left until your deadline, instead of setting Total render time, select your deadline in Finish time and leave the default value for Start time (the current time) unless you have a later starting time in mind. The Total render time will be automatically calculated as:

Total render time = Finish time - Start time

For many commercial projects, the rendering quality has to meet certain standards, meaning that the rendering time per frame cannot be reduced. In cases like these, one way to finish on time is to increase the number of machines. But how many do you need?

To estimate how many machines you'll need:

1. Choose the appropriate radio button to specify that you need to find the number of machines needed.
2. Set the Time per frame.
3. Set the number of Number of frames.
4. Finally, select your Target finish time or enter the Total time you need to meet to find the Number of machines you need.

Note that this method assumes that all machines contribute equal amounts of processing power and are running 24 hours a day.

To further illustrate how this works with a fun example, let's find the average render time per frame in Toy Story 3, based on some numbers from an Insider video article. We learn here that there were over 77 minutes of animation, consisting of 114,240 frames. Pixar used 117 machines and completed rendering in 1084 days. Each frame took anywhere from 45 minutes up to 30 hours to render, but to more precisely calculate render time per frame, follow these steps:

1. Set the Number of frames to 114,240. Note that this gives us a Movie length of 79.33 min, which you can see under the Animation summary of our tool. That calculated figure matches closely to the provided animation length of 77 min.
2. Set the Number of machines to 117.
3. Set Total render time to 1084 days.

The 3D render calculator tells us that the average render time per frame for Toy Story 3 was around 27 hours!