: Does ray tracing render time depend linearly on image resolution? (I'm not quite sure whether this question really belongs on this particular Stack Exchange, but I don't know where else to ask.

@Samaraweera207

Yes, render time should roughly scale in a linear fashion, with each pixel taking about the same amount of time to render.

There are many other factors that could throw it off though — running short on RAM, setup and post-processing.

The easiest way to find out would be to render a few lower res tests at different resolutions and graph the times against pixel count.

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@Jessie844

You need to make your own tests, but in this case the "weight" of the final file dosen't say anithing. If you save a bmp file will weight lets say 1mb and the exact same file on png could weight 1/3 of thoose mb.

One thing that can be somehow estimated is the resolution.

The resolution is the "size" in pixels. For example If you have a file 1000 x 1000 px and you want to render a final file double the size, 2000 x 2000 px it will be 4 times bigger. It is a square proportion, not a linear one.

But it will be a limit due your phisical ram, and your program could crash after certain limits.

One test I would recomend is to do verey small renders, 200x200px, 400x400px and 600x600px, write the times on an excell table and see the proportion. They should be arround 1x, 4x, 9x.

And you can perform aditional tests like 200x200 with dof, and without it for example and complete your table in aditional columns.

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