Rendering issues

What's up? I'd really like your opinion on this matter.
Yes, I know, this year has been slow, and there's a good reason to it, so I thought I could fill you all in.

The thing is that this year since I upgraded some of my hardware, I decided to try to up a level of quality, so I upgraded my software too and find myself in a shitstorm complex situation of trial and errors.

The thinkg is this: The main problem with the comics is the rendering time (render is how long it takes to create a final image with the 3D software, if you don't know).

There are 3 render methods: basic, 3delight, and Iray.

Basic is what I used on my early comics, takes 10 seconds, and looks like this:

For the last few years I've been using 3Delight, wich I'm familiar with, takes 2-3 minutes, and looks like this:

But this year I decided to try my luck with Iray... And it look awesome! To make a "decent" render it takes from 5 to 15 minutes, and looks like this:

I do mean, looks awesome.

Now, considering That my comics use around 400-800 renders (plus trial and errors, re-renders) and there's the added photoshop time per image... Rendring in Iray takes sooooo muuuuch timeeeee to get things done!
And in indoors, or under shadows/low light, all I get are grainy images!

There's also the problem that every render method behaves different, requires a whole new setup and lightning work... so, I've been re-learning how to render basically just to use Iray.


So, to summarize it - I've been using a render method that crawls and I can't render indoors right so far, I'm kinda stuck. I've spent quite a lot of time and months just trying different ways to render and re-learning.

But there's good news! I should have something soon, and I got half done the Halloween comic part 2.

And since you reached this part of the post... here's a quick caption for you!

What? you want more? You want me to spoil what the next comic is about?
Hmpph... Let me think... All I can tell you is that:
- is medieval themed
- involves a Champion from Ingnam
- involved drinking plenty of fluids and meeting a wide variety of colorful characters