190h05m and still rendering

Started by TheBadger, February 28, 2012, 09:53:25 PM

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TheBadger

Hello,

I am rendering the environment from the project I have been getting help on in this forum, from all of my last 5 threads. It looks really good, and its almost done!.. Thanks to everyone who helped.

But now Im back to the same render issues I was at when I started using TG2, 189hrs 51 min and still rendering :'(

2500x1046
detail:0.9
AA6
GIrd:3
GIsq:3
GIbr:8
Ray trace objects: Yes, Ray trace atmo: Yes, GI surface details: Yes
Do soft shadows: yes

I'm very sure the problem is my "do soft shadows" settings. I have them at: SSD: 1.05059, SSS: 11, SJ: 1
I set them arbitrarily, so I know this is whats causing the long render time.

So, what is the best practices for Do soft shadows? There are dos and don'ts for rendering in general, but I never saw a sticky for soft shadows.
The thing about it is using soft shadows dramatically improves every image (just about), so not using it is not an option

Any thoughts you want to share are welcome. Thanks guys.
It has been eaten.

Oshyan

Actually I would guess it's your primary Detail at 0.9 that is causing most of the high render time and seems unnecessary. If I read your soft shadow settings correctly, you're only using 11 samples, which is just slightly higher than the default and should not cause *dramatically* longer render times. Without knowing your system specs and the specifics of the scene it's hard to make any other recommendations. The details render settings you've mentioned also don't tell the entire story, if you are using raytraced atmosphere with AA6 and normal or increased atmosphere or cloud samples, you will definitely be wasting a lot of render time.

I suggest posting an image of previous versions of the scene, and your system specs.

- Oshyan

TheBadger


Re: 190h05m and still rendering
Hi Oshyan,

This is an early version of what Im rendering now. Add to it a ton of plants and FrankB's "over cast sky" nodes, and you will have a good idea of what I'm rendering now. I did not change any of Franks's cloud settings as they rendered very well in a early test render.

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:   Mac Pro
  Model Identifier:   MacPro4,1
  Processor Name:   Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  Processor Speed:   2.26 GHz
  Number Of Processors:   2
  Total Number Of Cores:   8
  L2 Cache (per core):   256 KB
  L3 Cache (per processor):   8 MB
  Memory:   32 GB
It has been eaten.

TheBadger

#3
^^I set my 0.9 detail based on the sticky. But I did get good result at .7 detail. I would not have guessed that the small jump would have made such an impact...Being that I stayed under a detail of 1. But that was without do soft on. Also I did my tests at a much reduced pix size


*do soft off
It has been eaten.

AP

"You have thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth, before your baby brother becomes one of us... forever."

TheBadger

LOL, :D

I just bought a copy of the DVD to watch with my Son. He's way to young now but I am really looking forward to it.

This image is a tribute to Henson, but the story this project is for has nothing in common.
It has been eaten.

AP

Quote from: TheBadger on February 28, 2012, 10:28:18 PM
LOL, :D

I just bought a copy of the DVD to watch with my Son. He's way to young now but I am really looking forward to it.

This image is a tribute to Henson, but the story this project is for has nothing in common.

In spite of it being unrelated, i like were it is going thus far. The vines are rather nifty.

reck

Doesn't having GI surface details turned on add a lot to the render time?

Love the image BTW.

Tangled-Universe

Reck is right, GI SD takes 3 times longer to render most of the times.
In the least worse case scenario it takes twice as long.

Also, as Oshyan pointed out, it's likely due to the ray trace atmosphere in combination with high atmosphere samples.
How many atmosphere samples do you use now?
I don't see clouds, but if you still use them somehow, how many samples do they have and which quality setting does that achieve?

Besides that the seemingly small increase from 0.7 render detail to 0.9 makes a huge difference, actually.
Not only will the geometry be subdivided much more (likely beyond the sub-pixel level), also the GI calculations are linked to them, exacerbating the rendertime indirectly.
Also, you probably use a very low gradient patch size in your compute terrain to get those walls look good, so that also may contribute to the longer rendertime, especially if you render at such high detail levels.

Looking at the image and your machine specs this should render under 12 hours easily I'd guess.
However, I wouldn't be surprised this also takes so long because of the huge amount of geometry you've imported with all those ivy's. Damn! :D


I'd restart the render, sorry, then use the following for a crop of the area with the most contrast, so darkest shadow vs direct lighting:

Detail 0.75
AA6 (full)
GI 2/4/6
No GI SD
Atmosphere samples = 32 (NO ray trace atmosphere)
Keep soft shadows as is (default is 0.5 degrees which is the soft shadow radius like in real life, so 1 is a bit exaggerated effect, but can often be desired)

This should render muuuuch faster.
If you're not happy with the detail of the ivy's in the shadow you can increase the GI from 2/4/6 to 3/6/6.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Martin

ajcgi

Crikey moses, I thought the scene I'm working on was complicated enough.  ;D
Would love to see this when it's done. Even that early version is beautiful!

rcallicotte

Can't wait to see the final.  What's above looks very fine.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

jo

Hi,

You have the same Mac Pro as me, except way more RAM - I only have have 6 GB, quite jealous ;-). It's not a slow machine by any means so I definitely think it's to do with your render settings as the others have suggested.

Regards,

Jo

mhaze

Great image. Look forward to the final version.

TheBadger

#13
@reck & Tangled-Universe
Hi Guys, can you tell me when you do use and never use GI surface details turned on?

@Tangled-Universe
Hi again T-U,
I used FrankB's overcast sky in my final render. I did not make any changes to the nodes, the settings are as follows

Atmo
samples: 48
jitter:1

High Altitude cumulus
Quality: 1.12
Samples: 31
Low Cumulus
quality: 1.00968
Samples: 57
Cirrus
quality: 1.19738
Samples: 9

Does knowing that change any of the recommendations you gave above?
I do use a low gradient patch size 0.1, thanks for pointing that out, it makes me feel like I did something smart. But if you remember, it was you and Dune who told me how to do that ;)
Number of individual Ivy in final render: 255+, the file holding the ivy objects is 2.71GB. This is why I rendered at 2500pix wide, I got sick of making ivy which took between 20 min and 1hr per ivy to make :'(. So I plan on painting the rest in in photoshop as per Dylan Cole's methods: http://www.dylancolestudio.com/ Mostly just back ground work to do.
The render is at 203hr now. But there is only a little spot at the bottom left and right of the image remaining to render. Its so close to finishing I cant bring my self to stop it :-\ However, I will pay close attention to your settings for the rest of the shots for this world.! :)
ty again martin, for all of your help and time :D

@mhaze, calico, ajcgi, ChrisC
Thank you for the kind words

@Jo
Hi Jo,
I am glad to hear that you use the same system. It makes me feel like I made a good choice since I added the cost of my comp to my school loans, which I will be repaying for the rest of my life. We call that The golden chains ::) You probably already know this, but you can get a ton of memory for a little money. I replaced my 8GB mac memory for 32GB at a cost of only $300.00 US. The modules are basically the exact same thing, you can even get the exact same mac memory for a tiny bit more, but I was being frugal. If anyone reading this wants a link to reputable 3rd party dealers I can post what I have.

Thanks all!
I will post the finished work for your review.

It has been eaten.

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: TheBadger on February 29, 2012, 11:16:25 AM
@reck & Tangled-Universe
Hi Guys, can you tell me when you do use and never use GI surface details turned on?

@Tangled-Universe
Hi again T-U,
I used FrankB's overcast sky in my final render. I did not make any changes to the nodes, the settings are as follows

Atmo
samples: 48
jitter:1

High Altitude cumulus
Quality: 1.12
Samples: 31
Low Cumulus
quality: 1.00968
Samples: 57
Cirrus
quality: 1.19738
Samples: 9

Does knowing that change any of the recommendations you gave above?
I do use a low gradient patch size 0.1, thanks for pointing that out, it makes me feel like I did something smart. But if you remember, it was you and Dune who told me how to do that ;)
Number of individual Ivy in final render: 255+, the file holding the ivy objects is 2.71GB. This is why I rendered at 2500pix wide, I got sick of making ivy which took between 20 min and 1hr per ivy to make :'(. So I plan on painting the rest in in photoshop as per Dylan Cole's methods:http://www.dylancolestudio.com/ Mostly just back ground work to do.
The render is at 203hr now. But there is only a little spot at the bottom left and right of the image remaining to render. Its so close to finishing I cant bring my self to stop it :-\ However, I will pay close attention to your settings for the rest of the shots for this world.! :)
ty again martin, for all of your help and time :D

I use GI SD only when I feel I need GI in tiny areas, like vegetation and small crevices.
Since that happens very rarely I can easily say I almost never use it.

The patch size is something I remember being suggested to you to make your walls work.
I didn't say it's not good. I only included it in the list of possible reasons why this takes so long.

About the atmo settings:

Atmo
samples: 48
jitter:1

High Altitude cumulus
Quality: 1.12
Samples: 31
Low Cumulus
quality: 1.00968
Samples: 57
Cirrus
quality: 1.19738
Samples: 9

You're using ray traced atmosphere at AA6, which is quite a high setting when it comes to raytracing atmosphere elements, but NOT vegetation.
So if you ever render a landscape without vegetation you also won't need high AA settings and thus should be more comfortable with using ray traced atmosphere then.
However, if you render objects/vegetation and need AA6 or higher then it is really not favorable to use ray trace atmosphere.
I recently made quite an extensive comparison showing this and this especially accounts for clouds.

So to get back to the settings: Disable ray trace atmosphere ;)
If you do so then you can keep the settings as is. Atmo samples @ 48 is high'ish, but definitely not too much.
Since your cloud layers do not need many samples to achieve a quality level of 1 I wouldn't bother too much changing those settings as it will not save that much rendertime.
Unless you use ray trace atmosphere ;)
So if you still feel you must use ray trace atmosphere @ AA6 then use 8 atmo samples and set the quality levels of the atmosphere to something like 0.2-0.3 and that should be enough.

Did I forget something?

Oh yes, the render settings recommendation thread should be re-written, completely! ;)