strange extra render pass causing bizarre color noise

[Syx]

Here is a tiny section of terrain. Instead of water, I used a plane to simulate lava.

Here is the initial pass, with the second pass right below it.



Atmosphere and shadows are disabled. Detail 5, AA 2. Raytracing on. SS Prepass off (and seems to crash Terragen if I have it on)

It actually seems like the terrain has holes in it and the lava is showing through. In closeups of this same region, this problem seems to go away.

[Oshyan]

Detail 5 or detail 0.5? If it's 5, that may be the source of your problem. Try 1 or even 0.75.

- Oshyan

[Syx]

Eesh, have I been reading something wrong into the detail function? Why would higher detail result in lower quality?

[Oshyan]

Detail is not really supposed to go above 1. TG2 allows you to set almost any value for most settings, which gives it a lot of flexibility, but in some cases it gives very unintended consequences. In the case of the detail setting, I'm not certain why it produces the results it does, but you'll get better results with detail between 0.5 and 1.0, and that's the range it's designed to work in under normal circumstances.

- Oshyan

[Syx]

Ah, thanks for the heads up. That explains a lot. I once had it set to 8 and this scene rendered beautifully. I must've just gotten really lucky.

[PorcupineFloyd]

How long did it took to render on detail set to 8?
I do my final renders on Q=0.65 or 0.7. It works well if you don't have any close-ups of water surface with transparency (reveals visible triangulation in terrain beneath at that setting).

[Syx]

2 days, I think. It really didn't make me think something was awry, because I've already seen how long TG2 takes compared to its predecessor. But that's not completely consistent either. I even had a situation where 0.2 took longer than 9.

[Tangled-Universe]

2 days, I think. It really didn't make me think something was awry, because I've already seen how long TG2 takes compared to its predecessor. But that's not completely consistent either. I even had a situation where 0.2 took longer than 9.

It's very unlikely a 0.2 detail render will take 9 hours, unless you use a <500Mhz PC

Perhaps it's useful to read this thread perhaps:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0

[cyphyr]

There's a lot of different elements adding to render time and detail is only one of them. GI detail and Sample quality can hit hard. Ray Tracing shadows in atmospheres and clouds are a big render hit together with high sample/quality settings, also low cloud on water where the calculations of transparency, reflection, refraction and opacity all pile on top of each other. That said I've never gone above a detail setting of 1. Also remember if your using an i7 (I think the new i3's too, don't quote me on that) you'll need to set minimum threads to 8 manually to take full advantage of all your cores.

Richard

[Syx]

It's very unlikely a 0.2 detail render will take 9 hours, unless you use a <500Mhz PC

Perhaps it's useful to read this thread perhaps:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0

3.2Ghz quad-core. Though I was rendering at HD widescreen resolution, with multiple shadow ray-casting light sources.