Render Times

[3DGuy]

I just tested it with one of my own scenes. Difference was less dramatic, but still the new version was 35% slower (24 minutes vs 32.5 minutes)

[Oshyan]

Thanks for the continued reports everyone. We have identified an issue whereby the acceleration cache for the clouds will have a minimal or at least significantly lessened effect due to the implemented fixes for the "blockiness" issue. The effect of this will vary from scene to scene and it will not always be so dramatic as in this benchmark scene.

We will work on a better balance for the acceleration cache and blockiness fixes but we may not be able to release an interim update to resolve it at this time. It will certainly be addressed and better optimized in a future update though.

Unfortunately issues like this will be a part of any ongoing public test such as the Technology Preview release. We do apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this causes.

- Oshyan

[cyphyr]

I'm totally cool with this and I think its a great way for a company to test a product like terragen. Because of its nodal system there are SO many differant ways of rigging things up it would be next to imposible to do this level of testing in-house. I'll try a couple of renders without clouds in them and see how they compare.
Cheers
Richard

[Caramel]

I re rendered my scene, taking out a cloud layer, reducing atmosphere quality, etc. and amazingly render time improved from 3-5 hours to 5-10 minutes! However, I didn't test each setting one at a time so I'm not sure exactly what was taking all that time.

[cyphyr]

Made another test, this time disabling the "Cumulus Layer 1" (enable, enable primary and enable seccondary all un-ticked) and the render times were significantly improoved. Build 1.8.64.0 rendered the scene out in 2.24min and Build 1.8.76.0 rendered out in 3.10min. For referance my system is a Rock Extreme Ti 3.4ghz with 1Gig ram
Richard

[Lucio]

i just ran the benchmark on the new version and previously had a render time of 6mins 06seconds now my render times 10mins 47seconds:(  so much of optimisation?

i have  P4 2.8ghz northwood so it looks like it affects both intel and amd

I've the same exact situation on my own - same processor, same render times (6:38 on 1.8.64.0 and 10:55 on 1.8.72.0)

[gradient]

Oshyan;
I must say I am flabbergasted that Planetside would release the update without testing the render time impact of the changes you describe.
From the posts so far, it appears that render times have increased at least 30%....possibly up to 70% depending upon the scene.  I don't think that constitutes "slightly slower render times" or a "minimal or at least significantly lessened effect".
I'm not impressed!
@cyphyr...your numbers also confirm increased render times for the new build.
@caramel...you need to compare build 1.8.64 to build 1.8.76...otherwise your numbers are meaningless.

[Allegro]

Heh, look at the list, there's a guy with 6 Gigs of RAM and Quad core
Somehow, he/she has a Mac..interesting lol

That's me
It's not a Mac, it's a Dell.  Got it in November as I'm about to graduate and intend on doing visual effects work.

Edit:  I didn't notice the mac one previously... mine is the other 6gb ram quad.... the 1866 MHz one

Heh lol, I wonder how you fit so much? You only have 4 slots...right?

4 slots..did you get like 2 2 GIG sticks of ram and 2 1 GIG sticks of ram...fits out to 6 gbs of ram

Nice...but do the extra 4 do any extra good? lol

Well, I've got a 64 bit machine... so my motherboard will allow me to have 64gb of ram.  8 Slots, that I can stick 8gb in each slot.  Right now I've got 6 of the dimms filled with 1gb each.  With a 64 bit machine, having 4 gb of ram is pretty much the same as having 2gb on a 32 bit machine... but after that it's the icing.  I can work with Photoshop files that are more than a gig in size.  I can have Maya, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, & Itunes running all at the same time, with no slowdown.  I rendered out a skybox for a scene last week.  I had Terragen rendering three frames at once, and was still able to use my 4th processor to do uvmapping in Maya.

It's an advantage for sure, and it will become more of an advantage as companies gear their programs for 64bit machines.

[digidon]

Since posting the render time problem with 1.8.76.0 in reply#12 of this thread I have noticed another difference between 1.8.76.0 and 1.8.64.0.  In .64 if you open the program and render a scene, then render it again and again( without changing any settings) there will only be slight differences between the render times.  But if you do the same with .76 there are larger differences between the render times.  The first render after opening the program will be the shortest time.  After that they increase at amounts significantly greater than .64.

This may be just another manifestation of the accelerated cache and blockiness fixes mentioned by Oshyan in Reply #31 of this thread.

I recently made a 3000 image movie using .64.  The increase in .76's render times could seriously impact such a project( depending on the degree of atmosphere).  However, I think I will use .76 for single images since there are improvements in many places.

DigiDon

[Caramel]

Is there a change log anywhere so we can actually tell what changes they made?

[digidon]

The changes of .76 over .64 can be found by going to "Announcements" at the top of the forum then clicking on "New version: ........"

[rcallicotte]

I think if anyone has a problem with a whether it's faster or slower at this point isn't "playing fair".  This is a PREVIEW or isn't it?  And to expect things to be built solidly and then later to be built faster is normal.  That's how I understand programming. 

Ever read any of John Carmack's logs (if you can fish through the genius intricacies of his mind)?  I've read on more occasion where speed just wasn't an issue until the very end.  Same with the 3DRealm's logs about what they're programming.  Making such an issue about render times might be helpful, but I'm more interested in features - like transparency, opacity, shaders, functions.  I'm 100% confident that Jo and Matt will make this baby hum once all of these things are working.

So, Oshyan, I for one am willing to wait and be patient.  Disappointment will come and go until it is finally what I expect it to be - excellent. 

Thanks for the continued reports everyone. We have identified an issue whereby the acceleration cache for the clouds will have a minimal or at least significantly lessened effect due to the implemented fixes for the "blockiness" issue. The effect of this will vary from scene to scene and it will not always be so dramatic as in this benchmark scene.

We will work on a better balance for the acceleration cache and blockiness fixes but we may not be able to release an interim update to resolve it at this time. It will certainly be addressed and better optimized in a future update though.

Unfortunately issues like this will be a part of any ongoing public test such as the Technology Preview release. We do apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this causes.

- Oshyan

[Oshyan]

Gradient, some speed tests were done, but they didn't generally indicate such a dramatic performance loss. I will agree that not testing on the currently available benchmark scene by Karsten was an oversight and I will be sure to include it in future tests of alpha builds for comparison.

That being said please do keep in mind that this is a pre-release Technology Preview. Our current focus is on feature implementation and bug fixing. The initial Technology Preview release had many well-known problems, some of them fairly serious (frequent crashes, etc.) so fixing those issues was of greatest importance for us on this update release. Speed improvements are always desirable and will be implemented as time allows, but hopefully you'll agree that actually being able to work in the application without worrying about crashes is a bit more important than rendering as fast as possible.

You can still look forward to very significant optimization in the future. Perhaps it will not be enough for you, but only time will tell. In the meantime if the ups and downs of these update releases - the 2 steps forward and sometimes 1 step back - bothers you then I would simply suggest taking a break from TG for a while and waiting until the final release. You have to accept a certain amount of frustration and "wasted" time in dealing with any pre-release and its inevitable shortcomings. If you're not prepared to do that, there is little use in following the every development of the program and being upset when it doesn't go in the direction you want it to.

I do hope you'll enjoy and be able to comfortably use the final release but I don't think the Technology Release period will be of use to you given what you've said so far. We certainly didn't intend it to be used by everyone; if we thought it was ready for that we would have released it in final, or at least as a beta!

- Oshyan

[DiscoBall]

Heh, look at the list, there's a guy with 6 Gigs of RAM and Quad core
Somehow, he/she has a Mac..interesting lol

That's me
It's not a Mac, it's a Dell.  Got it in November as I'm about to graduate and intend on doing visual effects work.

Edit:  I didn't notice the mac one previously... mine is the other 6gb ram quad.... the 1866 MHz one

Heh lol, I wonder how you fit so much? You only have 4 slots...right?

4 slots..did you get like 2 2 GIG sticks of ram and 2 1 GIG sticks of ram...fits out to 6 gbs of ram

Nice...but do the extra 4 do any extra good? lol

Well, I've got a 64 bit machine... so my motherboard will allow me to have 64gb of ram.  8 Slots, that I can stick 8gb in each slot.  Right now I've got 6 of the dimms filled with 1gb each.  With a 64 bit machine, having 4 gb of ram is pretty much the same as having 2gb on a 32 bit machine... but after that it's the icing.  I can work with Photoshop files that are more than a gig in size.  I can have Maya, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, & Itunes running all at the same time, with no slowdown.  I rendered out a skybox for a scene last week.  I had Terragen rendering three frames at once, and was still able to use my 4th processor to do uvmapping in Maya.

It's an advantage for sure, and it will become more of an advantage as companies gear their programs for 64bit machines.

Lol restricting Terrgaen to 1 core each, eh? Wish I could do that...man I seriously need to upgrade my CPU lol
Btw, did you have THREE Terragen TGD's open at once, and if not, how'd you manage to render 3 at a time with 1 TG2TP program? :S

And nicely said Oshyan, the final release should suit everyone Soon..enough

[king_tiger_666]

probably three instances of terragen running at once