Water Surface Rendering Optimization

[AstroStudio]

Greeting Forums Users,

I've been using Terragen2 for 6+ months now and LOVE creating with it.  I've also been reading the Forums for a while.  This is my first post.

I've been rendering some scenes at ultra-high resolution (~8 Mpx) and maximum detail (=1).  On some occasions I have noticed my rendering speeds getting severely bogged down in areas that depict water surfaces.  I'm wondering if anyone here has any tips or techniques to share with me about what setting adjustments could markedly speed up the rendering of water surfaces without seriously compromising the quality of the actual visual result.

I look forward to hearing from you, 

[dandelO]

Hi, AstroStudio. Here's a method I came up with to eliminate the rendering of subterranean water, which has a major impact on render times when really it isn't required to be rendered at all. This method will just place your water where your mask describes, regardless of the size of your water plane. Either image based or shader based masking can be used, whichever is easiest for your particular setup.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8793.0
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Another way to really speed up water rendering is, only if it isn't required of course, disabling transparency. Just set transparency to '0', this will speed things up a lot. If your scene doesn't require transparency to be seen, or indeed the scene just doesn't show any visible transparency from your POV, all the water shader will do is add unwanted render time by using the default transparency settings in scenes which don't require those render calculations to be done.

Hopefully some of that helps you out a bit.

[Dune]

I've got another one for you (and everyone else); attach a first water shader with waves but transparency at 0 to the input of a surface shader, disable color in the SS and blend it by a distance shader, where you set the distance to the maximum area that you need transparency (which depends on viewing angle). Now add another water shader with you transparency, but no waves as the child. attach surface layer to lake. Done. Distant water now will have no transparency (you hardly see it there anyway), which will render faster.

[AstroStudio]

dandelO: setting transparency to 0 was the clue I needed.  It helped me out more than just a bit.  Thanks!

[yossam]

Is there any way to increase the height of the water? I know it's probably simple, I just can't figure it out.

[Cyber-Angel]

Is there any way to increase the height of the water? I know it's probably simple, I just can't figure it out.

Click on the lake node and adjust the Water Level under the Transform Tab.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel