So, I feel a bit stupid asking this, but here we go.

I'm trying to use iRay to render an iClone scene using the standalone option. And the preparation (the creation of the mi files before the standalone iRay software's called up) is taking much longer than I expected, without pushing any of my system's resources (CPU, GPU, disk write speeds, etc. my system's components are all basically idling). I just can't figure out why it's so slow.

Is there a setting I can adjust to speed up this process, or is this basically the norm?

Thank you in advance,

Irina

If you are rendering series of images (to make a video) there is a setting that will allow you to "write" the objects that don't move just one time, so basically all your scenery, buildings, floors, parked cars, everything like that gets written one time instead of for every frame.  That is a huge time (and disk space) saver.

I'm sorry I don't remember the exact option and where it is right now.  I used to know this very intimately, but I haven't used Iray seriously for many months now, and I'm not sitting at my iClone computer.  If you don't find it, and nobody else jumps in here, I should be able to point you in the right direction tomorrow.  But that only helps if you are exporting many frames, it won't help for a single still image.

Good luck.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I believe this will help (assuming you are exporting a sequence, not just a single image).
Select the "moving items" and click plus-sign at top-right of the list to put then on the list (and be sure to checkmark the box top-left of the list).

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Thank you, justaviking (love your user name, btw).

I'm already only rendering the character. I'm just frustrated with the speed of the prep for rendering (where iClone is playing through the clip and generating the mi files that iRay will later use in the standalone version). This prep process uses a tiny fraction of my processor/GPU/memory/etc. and I keep wondering why I can't throw more processing power/memory at it to speed it up. (for contrast, while the iRay render itself is running, it loads up my GPU to the max, so I'm confident my machine can't run that process any faster even with only the characters being processed for each frame, and the other optimizations I've done with the settings)

Either way, thank you for your time, and that's indeed a great tip to speed up the overall process!