Experimenting On Speeding Up Content Creation

I've been trying to spend some time figuring out how to speed up creation of content for my websites.  I want to speed up the pace of updates, but I also don't want to torpedo the quality of what is getting created and uploaded. I know that a major part of having a website that thrives and does well is updating it on a frequent basis. And I'm trying to figure out ways to speed up those updates

TRYING TO EEK SOME MORE PERFORMANCE OUT OF MY QUADCORE 
I have two computers available for making content.  One is a quadcore and one is a six core machine.  The six core machine is one I use for a variety of things - doing some programming and playing games etc - in addition to content creation.  The quadcore is purely dedicated to making stuff for my websites Over time I will try to use the six core machine more and more but I'm gradually transitioning toward that, one reason being that a lot of the tools I use are installed and set up the way I want on the quadcore, but I haven't gotten the same environment totally set up on the six core machine yet.  It is a relatively new machine

So recently I've tried to figure out how I can get a bit more rapid creation out of the quadcore.  While the six core machine can handle raytracing a fairly complicated scene and take only 45 to 60 seconds per image, the quadcore struggles mightily and sometimes can take five minutes per image.  Sometimes the rendering software just crashes. The quadcore is running a 32 bit os and I have like 3 gig of memory so there's that bottleneck too.  The six core machine is running a 64 bit os with 16 gig of memory.  Like I said, long term I think the solution is to try to use the six core machine more of the time.  But I use it for other things too and haven't completely gotten the tools set up on it.  So in the short term I've tried a few things to speed up the quad core.

USE BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR SCENERY 

Rendered Character, Flat Image Background

The first thing I tried was to just render the characters themselves and use a photographic image as the background.  This meant that the computer only needed to grind away raytracing the characters - the woman with big boobs/muscles and any guy she is interacting with for example - but not the background scenery.  So in the past I'd used a lot of scenery props and sets, but when I made the move to rendering in a raytraced mode instead of a shadow map mode, my poor quadcore started grinding to a halt.

By just using a background image and rendering only the characters, things definitely sped up.  You may have noticed that I've been posting comics using this technique lately. On the plus side, it speeds rendering way up on the quadcore.  On the downside, no character shadows show up (other than shadowing on the characters themselves) and visually it can be rather obvious that the characters are just standing in front of a flat background image (like a green screen).


USE NERD3D BACKDROP FOR SCENERY 

Rendered Character, Textured Backdrop Prop

While using a background image did speed things up, it made the renders look noticeably less realistic than rendering background scenes as well as characters would have.  So with my latest comic on strongandstacked.com, Busty Brawler, I tried another technique.  Instead of just using a background image as wallpaper in front of which the characters are posed, I tried using a prop called The Backdrop by Nerd3D http://www.nerd3d.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=4   The way this prop works is that you put an image onto it as a texture.  And then you pose your characters onto the prop. 

She's standing on the Backdrop Prop

This looks a lot more realistic than just using a background wall paper image because the Backdrop does have a floor portion to it that you can make your characters stand on.  Shadows can thus fall from your characters onto the backdrop floor.

GOING FORWARD 
I'm going to try to use the Backdrop for the next few comics I create and see how that goes.  I will also try to start using the six core machine more often, and it can handle raytrace rendering of actual background scenes.

Rendered Character in Rendered Scene

Rendered Character in Rendered Scene