While that gap between film and games has been large for a long time, it definitely is closing now with the latest generation of film renderers based data on ra

While that gap between film and games has been large for a long time, it definitely is closing now with the latest generation of film renderers based data on ray tracing hardware, and a large push in the film industry to incorporate real-time pre-vis workflows and reduce iteration times. It’s very common for film CG frames to take a few hours but not usually 12 hours. You need to be able to start rendering jobs at the end of the day and have them ready for dailies on the morning. Jobs that take more than 4 hours risk clogging the queue and taking 2 days per iteration rather than 1, so people are motivated to keep it reasonable. Another important difference between games and film is antialiasing techniques. Much of the difference in render time between them is in using fancier texture sampling and using lots more samples than games are willing to use or even need for decent quality.