How to measure the render time of 3ds max?

Question

How do I measure the render time of 3ds max? I would like a solution that doesn't involve me sitting glued to the computer during the render time! It also has to be sort of accurate.

My specific version is Autodesk 3ds Max 2012.

Answer 1

If you are using Autodesk Backburner to render your jobs, you can generate a report from the Backburner manager. You can save the report as a text file with comma separated values.

For each task (aka frame in your render job), it gives you date, start time, elapsed (time in seconds), task number and computer name that did the render. Open the text file and look at the column labelled 'Elapsed'.

If you are NOT using Backburner, record on paper the start time. When your renderjob is finished, open the output folder and look at the modified times of the file. do a little math and you can get the elapsed time.

Answer 2

I've never used it, but 3ds max has an email notifications option (in Email Notifications potion of the common tab of render setup) can it can be sued to send a notification every frame. That being said, mzwarg's answer is the right way to do it. Backburner can be set up such that the manager and server (renderer) are the same machine.