I know rendering is a timely issue, but I cant help to think that I may be doing something wrong that makes it last longer than it should, like should I emply out my library of all unused images, models, etc...? Maybe in my workspace or whatever?
I have a tendancy to use an image or material and end up not using it and I noticed those are still left in the workspace. Would this cause it to take longer to render?

LC
Leaving those in the pws will not impact render times.

Things that impact render times are:
Number of passes
Reflections
Shadows
Resolution of rendered frames or video.
Materials
Combiners (type of material but big render hit).
Duration of animation

David

Use Multipass with one pass. I find this renders much faster than using "multipass off".

Nos

How do I do that?

First make sure "Advanced" is checked" in the render options panel

then under the options tab choose a setting.

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If you just need to see your animation fast, try setting Quality to "Shaded" and "polys per patch" to "adaptive"