Hope this area is the right place to ask this:
What is the usual rendering time for a single frame of animation from, for example, Toy Story 3 ? I’ve heard that it’s about 13 hours - surely not?!?
I’m also curious how that compares to Toy Story. Naturally technology has advanced, but so has the complexity of the CGI.
Hi there, Irongiant! The length of rendering time depends on the quality of the computer and the level of detail in the frame (for example, a frame with a single box would render much faster than, say, a frame the crash sequence from Cars with all the smoke). In the case of Pixar, 13 hours is not unreasonable… I believe I’ve read it can take over 15 hours (they say so on their site, I’m just too lazy right now to go and look it up 
). I’ve actually done a good amount of renderings myself using Autodesk 3DS Max (click the link in my sig), and some of them have taken up to two days! Pixar renders several frames at a time on the numerous computers dedicated to rendering in their render farm, and thus they can release a movie on time even if it takes two days to render a frame (otherwise, we’d be talking about it taking a year to render 5 minutes at a frame rate of only 2 frames per second! 
). As far as the rendering difference goes between 20 years ago and today, I’m not sure… although the technology’s increased, so has the computer’s rendering capability, so it can go both ways. Anyways, hope that answers your question. 
Great answer, many thanks. 
No problem.