Is there more info about the TS1 re-releases then? Based on your comment I started looking for info and verified that the original render was 1536x922, but there's no info about the work they put into the 3D version and Blu-Ray release.
Re:Pixar in a Box
by tomvbussel on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @04:49PM
(#11765339)
Seems like it took them a few minutes per frame to render TS1 in 2011 [1], not sure if that's with the higher resolution.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-...
24 hours (wall clock, not CPU time) is a little long, but it's not unheard of.
With MC path tracing, the noise you get is pretty difficult to resolve, and a lot of companies are using denoisers afterwards to clean up the renders, as it's just not cost-effective to keep them rendering to that extent as denoising is faster.
> Twenty-four hours is not typical. [...] four hours is more common.
I'm in the industry, and [citation needed]. Four hours is not remotely typical for a final render frame, especially now that path tracers are the de facto standard.
Higher resolution, and stereo (3D), are also to blame. Toy Story was rendered at less that 1080 HD resolution!