need a little help with my settings

[TheBadger]

Hello all,
If anyone can help me configure my basic render settings for terragen2, I would be very grateful.
I know that this stuff is covered often, but I would like answers based on my specific system.
Nonetheless, all general info for all the render tabs, with my system in mind will be thankfully heard.
Fast and quality (as much as I can have the two at the same time) is the goal.

This is what Im working with
Mac Pro
OS X 10.6.3
Quad-Core Intel Xeon
2.26 GHz
Processors 2
Total Number Of Cores 8
L2 Cache (per core):   256 KB
L3 Cache (per processor):   8 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 5.86 GT/s

I am very new to Terragen2, but feel I am making progress thanks to all of you. (And special thanks to John Robertson for the  "Create Ben McDuff
An Introductory (hands on) tutorial to Terragen 2", pdf I found through this forum. If anyone knows of more like it please tell me!)

My question is, in the renders tab, what should my settings be based on the info I gave above?

Threads refer to cores, yes?

I know that 64 bit terragen2 is not yet here, but will it be soon, and will I be given a free upgrade since I just bought my copy of the program?

In general, what are good setting if i want quality and speed , please also talk about all the render tabs that i should understand. I know every project is different, just be general and specific if possible, and keep my info above in mind.

I thank you for whatever help you can give with such open ended questions.

Badger

[Henry Blewer]

Oshyan, who works for Planetside posted these here.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0

[TheBadger]

Thanks njeneb

That link helped to get me to a good starting point.

But if anyone can tell me how to manage my threads based on the info at the top of this thread that would be great too. Everything will prob help me.

[Henry Blewer]

I think I would max the thread usage to 4 max.  This would give you some room for large populations, but still render fairly quickly.

[Oshyan]

When dealing with a large number of cores, you have the option of using more render threads to speed up render time. The caveat is that this requires more memory, 50MB per thread at a minimum, and ideally 800MB/thread. That being said I use 8 threads on my Core i7 with 100MB/thread for cache (800MB total) and it works quite well in most cases. The Mac version is a bit less efficient with higher numbers of threads, so you may find 4 or 6 to be a better balance for you, but 4 would be a minimum if you ask me. Do be sure to have 100MB of cache per thread if possible as well. In more complex scenes, keep an eye on memory use as you may encounter crashes if TG2 runs out of memory. If that happens you can either reduce the number of threads and size of the total cache (keeping relative cache size per thread the same, e.g. going from 8 threads/800MB cache to 4 threads/400MB cache), OR you can reduce the size of the cache and keep the number of threads the same (e.g. 400MB cache, 8 threads = 50MB/thread). Both approaches will result in longer render times, of course.

All other settings are not really dependent on your machine, so a detail setting that is good for one system will be good for another system too of course. It's just a question of how fast it renders, and you can tune that with the number of threads and cache size.

The 64 bit version will be a free update for registered users.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Thanks Oshyan!

That helps me greatly!

I would say that all you staffers and some of the more talented artist who use your software should all get together and write a book full of tutorials for noobs like me, I would buy that book.

[Oshyan]

I hope we'll have a TG2 book at some point. For Planetside our first focus in that area is on finishing the official docs. We'd be happy to work with someone on a book though.

- Oshyan