Kent I have an idea to create a single blend file for creating/rendering shaders using the Shader Totem provided. This will be a huge benefit by giving me a single, pre-constructed environment to create Shaders. The problem is that my system is not quite powerful enough and my render times are pretty long. Do I need to have Reflective/Refractive Caustics, Post Processing Compositing/Sequencer, or "Use Hair BVH" enabled? Also, for those Shaders using only Environment Lighting, is it possible to simply move the Lights to a separate Layer and turn it off/on when needed?
This course has been of great benefit in helping me understand Shader and Node structure. Any other suggestions would be very helpful. Thank you.
Hi gfjarvis3 !
I think that is a good idea.
As to your questions:
Post Processing Compositing/Sequencer doesn't influence your render times, it just means, that if you are using the compositor it will render the composited image and not the scene. Likewise with the Video sequencer...
The hair BVH will render scenes with a lot of hair faster, but uses more RAM. If there is no hair in your scene, it won't make a difference if you have that checked or not.
With the Reflective/ Refractive Caustics, it will increase your render times, if there are caustics in your scene, but it will also make it look a lot more realistic. And if there are no caustics, it will not make a difference in render time if you keep that checked or not.
Basically, I would leave everything checked. If you don't care about realism, try 2.8 and use Eevee.
I hope this clears things up a bit.
And yes, you can put your lights on a separate layer. You can even put several different light setups, each on a different layer, so that you have one layer with only environmental lighting and then other layers with whatever light setup you want;)