Any ideas, anyone? ...

[dandelO]

I feel like this is really something I should already know and am actually embarrassed to ask the question now. But, then again, until tonight, I'd had put it into my head that elements outside the camera frustum(NOT FRUSTRUM, KENNY! ), were unable to reflect.
I don't know why but I think I got it into my head when some details by Matt, about region padding and crop/camera detail, were posted a long time ago, and I never bothered to try for myself and just assumed that it wasn't able to be done, or that the optimised outputs were too bad, that is wasn't worth it.

Another time I can remember is when I saw a beautiful Vue image by a friend, that had some lovely double reflections and I commented that I wish TG could do this too but, as it stood, the ray detail multiplier was not openly editable at that time and that every reflection would be degraded so far that I just thought it not worth the hassle as the exponential degradation would just take the piss out of my computer with the detail required to render in the first place. Maybe this ended up with me imagining that outside elements weren't reflectable(not a word, I know).
______________________________

Anyway, a few of us elsewhere were messing around with this idea and came to the point that reflections did, indeed, work for outside elements. BUT when I tried this tester on a micropolygon rendered object beside a ray traced object, my results are this, outside the camera frustum...

[attachimg=#]

Whilst, in the camera frustum, it reflects correctly...

[attachimg=#]

The red sphere is a default sphere, the blue sphere is a rock, where RTO is enabled.

My question is this; Can MP rendered objects(I'm thinking planet, really, as it's probably the most common one to displace and render) be rendered correctly in reflected surfaces at all?

I have the RDM set to 1 in this tester. Render detail is 0.75, but it is not improved by changing it to 1.

I've tried ray detail region padding(in camera) up to a level of 3, with nothing changing in the sphere outside the view, except render times.

.tgd attached.

I think I'm just being a bit dim and, like I say, I should already know this, but I never bothered to try until tonight and can't find any actual answer to the problem.

Cheers!

* I've a feeling that I've read somewhere here that this is something that is to be addressed but I can't find the thread now, typical of this place!

[Dune]

Never bothered looking at this, but wouldn't it be by design to minimize calculation costs by 'neglecting' objects outside camera frustum? Maybe the render-subdiv-settings could do some good?

Sincerely, your favorite waste of time 

[Kadri]

Martin , i tried it with your setup . I couldn't get a smooth object too.
Then i remembered the problem with the shadows from behind in animation.
It could be maybe any other thing, some settings i changed etc.
But i think Matt uses some optimizations for objects in certain angles to the camera .
Pure speculation of course

So i changed the angles of the objects and camera.
If you try the TGD i put here at first it is faceted.
Then when you change the "Ray detail region padding" to 1 it renders smoothly.

I tried another setting with something that produced a smooth object only with 20.
But i am not sure about this (I used very small renders) .

I hope this was what you are after.

Cheers.

[dandelO]

"Two new render settings on the Advanced tab which control the region in which ray traced polygons are fully subdivided. Outside of this region the ray traced polygons are only coarsely subdivided. Previously this region was the frustum seen by the rendered image or crop region, but now you can also choose to have no detail or to have detail everywhere within the camera frustum regardless of crop settings. "Ray detail region padding" can be used to enlarge (or shrink) the region. A value of 0 means no padding. A value of 1 adds a border to each side of the frustum which is equivalent to the width or height of the image or crop region, which makes the frustum 3 times as wide and 3 times as tall."

Matt

Think I've just confused myself reading this stuff some time ago. ^^

I'm almost positive there was a thread about reflections/shadows(yes, Kadri, shadows too) not rendering when not in view.

Was it maybe that elements directly behind the camera can't be padded at all because they are not at the side of the view, and so will not appear? Or will not be affected by any amount of padding, at least.

I think that's it, actually. Excuse me!

[Tangled-Universe]

...

Was it maybe that elements directly behind the camera can't be padded at all because they are not at the side of the view, and so will not appear? Or will not be affected by any amount of padding, at least.

I think that's it, actually. Excuse me!

I think that's correct. There's an experimental function in the latest alpha which should be able to resolve these type of problems.
I'll check if it works with your tgd.

Usually the region padding settings work, but perhaps probably only when they are in front of the plane on which the camera frustum exists, if you know what I mean.

No excuses necessary, this is confusing stuff sometimes

Cheers,
Martin

[Kadri]

...
No excuses necessary, this is confusing stuff sometimes
Cheers,
Martin

Yes i was going to say the same , Martin!
I learn many thinks all the day with TG2 and probably forget many on the road too

[Mandrake]

I think the work you were looking for your Royal Frustum, was the work Klas was doing with reflection of his plant obj's. long ways back, he had tons of examples and probably why you let it Lie..

[Matt]

Was it maybe that elements directly behind the camera can't be padded at all because they are not at the side of the view, and so will not appear? Or will not be affected by any amount of padding, at least.

That's correct. Anything that is 180 degrees or more to the side of the camera will never be fully subdivided, no matter how much padding you use. I hope to be able to add some options to enable this in future, but it might be a recipe for very long render times because now the whole world around you can be rendered with the same detail as what's in view. For flat, reflective surfaces it should be OK, but if you have objects reflecting rays in lots of directions it will become very slow.