For 3D software, rendering speed will be affected by many factors when it comes to animation, such as followings,

1. Hardware configuration.

The rendering speed of a high-performance computer will be much faster than the lower one. It is generally recommended that if you are working on 3D software, your computer is high-configured in CPU, Motherboard, Memory, Storage, etc., or you can use a render farm, like Fox Renderfarm, it is fired up thousands of rendering nodes, easy to use in an affordable price.

2. Software parameter settings.

Different software, there will be differences in the parameter settings affecting speed. Common 3D software are such as 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4d, Houdini, Clarisse, etc.. Take 3ds Max for example, settings of model, material, lighting, render etc., will affect rendering speed. In V-Ray tab of 3ds Max Render Setup, settings of Image Sampler (Antialiasing), Image Filter, Raytracing, VRayMtl, etc. will affect rendering speed. See the parameters in the panel shown below will directly affect the rendering speed.

3. Renderer.

3D software using different renderers will directly reflect the difference of rendering time. Common renderers including Arnold, RedShift, V-ray, Corona, Renderman, Octane, etc., each renderer is used in different way by 3D softwares. For example, the use of Octane for Cinema 4D, which is currently the most commonly used GPU renderer for C4D, because the GPU rendering engine is faster in many cases and allows for extremely interactive preview. So it is very popular right now.

Briefly, in the Octane renderer, the settings will directly affect the rendering speed. If you want to speed up the rendering time, check the “Adaptive sampling”, the rendering speed will be much faster, but the effect will not be the same. Depends on the effect you want, you need to adjust the settings and test it.