Render Optimization in Vue

I have been unable to find many good (free) Vue tutorials so I decided to make several of my own.
Made using Vue 9XStream but should apply to most versions.

When creating in Vue, do NOT use a preset atmosphere (unless of course it is one you yourself made).  A lot of the presets come with a lot of extra baggage that may not even benefit your scene. 

Make your scene first and THEN create your very own atmosphere using the options available when you hit F4 (Check out my tutorial on Realistic Atmospheres in Vue for more information on this).

When making your scene it is important to know the difference in the types of available terrain meshes.

Standard Terrain: A simpler mesh that renders very quickly.  If covering it with an ecosystem it can be suitable for closeups, otherwise keep this one in the background.

Procedural Terrain: Tons of detail.  Tons of polygons.  Use only as hero scenery, not filler.

When setting up your atmosphere keep this in mind:

The top three lighting models in the Atmosphere Editor render pretty quickly.

The bottom two models take a lot longer.

I use Global Illumination for most outdoor scenes, despite it taking a bit longer.

ONLY use Global Radiosity if you specifically have tons of reflectivity, bouncing both color and light around your scene.  Otherwise, do not use this option.

Regardless of what lighting model you choose, take the Quality Boost slider in the Light tab down to at least -1.  You can lower this to about -1.5 in most cases before seeing any visible drop in quality.

The Sky, Fog, and Haze tab has it's own Quality Boost slider.  This one's effects are a bit more visible so be sure to play with it.  At times I have had it as low as -1.6!!  Almost every slider in this tab will boost render time, so keep this in mind when creating your atmospheres.

Select your Sun layer.

Make sure Lens Flare is off. 

It really jacks up the render time and can honestly be done better in post.

Reduce Shadows to 80% max, this will lower the render time as well as better emulate reality. 

Not many real-life shadows are 100% opaque anyways!

To open the Render Options use Ctrl+F9.

The Vue presets assume you are either using a renderfarm or have a studio level of processing at your disposal, I would advise not using the preset options.

To combat the enormous render times Vue is famous for, check the User Settings options under the Preset Render Quality segment.

The first thing we want to look at are the Anti-Aliasing Options. 

In the Anti-aliasing section click the Edit button.

Make sure Object anti-aliasing is Optimized.

In the Subrays per pixel section, start the Min at 4 and the Max at 6.

Start the Object anti-aliasing Quality threshold at 30%.

Turn on Texture Anti-aliasing.

Start with a Min of 4 and a Max of 10.

Try to keep the Texture Anti-aliasing Quality Threshold under 46%

Now hit the OK button and go back to the Render Options window.

Things to double check.

In the middle section under the Render Quality area.

If you do not need much reflection or transparency in your scene then turn off:

Trace Reflections

Trace Transparency

Blurred Reflections

Blurred Transparency

Never, ever click the Depth of Field button.  It is much faster to just render out the depth channel and do this in Nuke.  Make sure to check that the Optimize last render pass option and the Optimize Volumetric Lights options are checked.  This will save you literally hours of render time.

If the plants in your scene are far away or you do not have any plants, check the Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants box.

The Advanced Effects Quality slider should be at 46% maximum, I usually render at about 40%.

Make sure Tile Rendering is NOT selected.  This process requires a vast amount of memory to complete and may crash the computer.  Once again, Vue is not very friendly desktop software, it was built for powerhouse machines at major studios or renderfarms to handle...some of these options are just not feasible on a single machine.

When setting your Picture Size and Resolution, keep in mind, the bigger the image/larger the DPI, the longer it is going to take.

If you can render at a lower resolution for the project at hand, do it...you will be glad you did.