A contractor is telling me these renderings will take weeks. Should they?

JangJangles

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1F0EGB9Z367O5nxtOnR1PhrkZmJSuDcGd?usp=drive_link

Please see the link above.

I'm a video producer for a marketing company. There is a contractor 3D CAD guy who did renderings of these scenes years back for a client and the client asked for an update of a small part on the front-most machine (the only one with a moving part). He has only had to redesign that small part (of course that takes time) but is saying the render will take weeks. These videos are 600kb/s bit rate and 720p. It doesn't have liquids/caustics, physics, ambient occlusion as far as I can tell (and not an intense polygon count like an animal would) but I'm barely competent when it comes to 3D stuff. 

I get that the original design of the entire scene may take a week but the rendering just seems like something a computer can do live nowadays. He's more of a CAD/engineering guy and not a 3D animator proper so I'd like to have some perspective.

Should this take weeks to render? Is the contractor not going about this in the correct way?

Thank you!

Krom

Ask him what his workflow is, let him describe the process by steps. And ask him to estimate the time for each step. Rendering alone shouldn't take weeks. It's not pixar. BUT there are maybe some things that actually require a lot of time.

teodar23

The actual rendering can be done real time, but i cant speak about the change needed as i dont fully understand it. Maybe ask for a "second opinion" i.e. quota from a different person

pior

The miscommunication is obviously between you and this contractor, as both parties are clearly not using the term "render" in the same way. If anything the fact that you mentionned the bitrate of the final video makes me think that both parties are not quite technically savy, since this bit of information is irrelevant here. This whole thing could be resolved in a matter of minutes by simply calling him over the phone.

Ruz

I think it taking weeks is a waaay too much. I rendered a 2k detailed camara shot of 200 frames at 2k in about 4 hours .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4aYrrp4Wo
so yeah maybe 5 or 6 different camera shots at 4 hours each, is just a days rendering, not 'weeks'
(This has volumetrics also)

The bitrate is just what you output from premiere, has nothing to do with the render time

Shrike

These renders can definitely be done in realtime in higher quality even (although he might need to use his software of course, which might not support that) 
No way is the actual rendering a week. If he has really terrible settings and a super old laptop maybe a couple hours.
The camera shots also are max one hour each in a lazy morning if you were to replicate them
You gotta ask for a breakdown exactly as this makes no sense.