190h05m and still rendering

[jo]

Hi,

@ JO
If you are reading this, would you mind sharing what you would have your *advanced* settings at in the render tabs. Perhaps I can get some speed gain there? What would you have all those settings at if this was your project?

If you mean me, I'm afraid I'm not much help when it comes to the finer details of rendering settings. Oshyan knows more than me about that, and Matt is the leading authority of course.

The only things I can venture an opinion on is the the threads and subdiv cache settings and I have to say I'd leave those at defaults. I would probably drop the bucket size down to 128 x 128 though. That quite often is faster and it would mean the final part of the render which you say takes some time would be divided up into smaller chunks allowing more threads to work on it.

It's a great looking scene though. The amount of vegetation and the fine detail is very impressive.

Regards,

Jo

[TheBadger]

TheBadger  i really like the first image

But before i posted here i did some tests. I can not believe that the GI Surface Detail-NO  makes the difference (so much).
It looks (after some tests) to me that you probably have some different objects settings.
I think the second image do not have any ivy leaves shadows .
Are you sure you did not accidentally unchecked the objects "Cast shadows" settings or anything like that ?

I don't know. I'll take a look.

[TheBadger]

Thanks Jo

I will check my bucket size and also wait for the others to share some advice. Truth is I never felt I had a good understanding of when to make changes to the settings there. I figured because you use the same system I could just put in what you use 

[TheBadger]

TheBadger  i really like the first image

But before i posted here i did some tests. I can not believe that the GI Surface Detail-NO  makes the difference (so much).
It looks (after some tests) to me that you probably have some different objects settings.
I think the second image do not have any ivy leaves shadows .
Are you sure you did not accidentally unchecked the objects "Cast shadows" settings or anything like that ?

I don't know. I'll take a look.

Object cast shadow *is checked* quality of all other populations is medium.

[Kadri]

Strange! The shadows on the second image does still look problematic to me TheBadger...

[TheBadger]

Strange! The shadows on the second image does still look problematic to me TheBadger...

I don't like render 2  at all! I am doing some crop renders now. I lowered the bucket size as jo said. Im waiting for matt and oshyan to show up with some great news that all I have to do is change some setting in my render preferences and everything will work perfect

[TheBadger]

Breakthrough ?

Following jo's bucket size change I am doing a crop render (about 9% of the image) I think I am seeing a massive jump in render speed! At this rate, the whole image should render (with original high settings) very close to what my 2nd render did.

Question:
Is there something about cropping that makes a render go faster? That is, if a crop renders fast so will a complete image, yes?

[Dune]

Some areas go faster than others, like you noticed yourself in the lower left corner. But it's a promising sign.

[FrankB]

I don't know what problem you guys are having with the second render. I think it's great as it is. Shadows look ok to me...

[Kadri]

TheBadger can you share the TGD file? No need for the maps, objects etc. I am curious about the settings only.

I don't know what problem you guys are having with the second render. I think it's great as it is. Shadows look ok to me...

No problem if you like the second image Frank ,but it looks to me that there are no shadows-or it has some kind of strange shadow settings (the ivy leaves) .

[TheBadger]

TheBadger can you share the TGD file? No need for the maps, objects etc. I am curious about the settings only.

Sure... After some sleep if its ok?

[Kadri]

TheBadger can you share the TGD file? No need for the maps, objects etc. I am curious about the settings only.

Sure... After some sleep if its ok?

[dandelO]

TheBadger  i really like the first image

But before i posted here i did some tests. I can not believe that the GI Surface Detail-NO  makes the difference (so much).
It looks (after some tests) to me that you probably have some different objects settings.
I think the second image do not have any ivy leaves shadows .
Are you sure you did not accidentally unchecked the objects "Cast shadows" settings or anything like that ?

The main difference in lighting is definitely coming from the GI SD being unchecked, Kadri. It affects the accuracy of shadows and draws them much more correctly, by the looks of things in my tests it calculates shadow distances and applies a beautiful falloff from the shadow's source, shadow-casting objects and elements that are really close to a receiving surface have a shadow darkest and most dense at the points of closest contact, and falloff to a less dense shadow nearer the edges.
I think you've seen this before but if you go to the bottom of the page you will see a few clear examples of the difference between SD=on/off. Notice the floor where the glowing sphere casts light onto it, the corners of the room, the shadow beneath the white sphere as it contacts the floor. https://sites.google.com/site/d4nd310/tg2gi

In Badger's 2nd image, there is nothing wrong with the plant shadowing that I notice, I can clearly see the ivy shadows, best visible on the right-hand wall but they are consistently flat in density from one shadow edge to the other. It's only that we have the really accurate GI surface detailed version to compare it to that I think we're noticing it isn't as 'correctly' lit.
I've been playing around with a great Sponza Atrium model that was offered free online a good while ago, got some lighting tests done but I think I'd like to try and play with the Ivy-Gen' again after seeing Badger's scene, I forgot how good the IG is and the Sponza model is just begging for it.
Can I fill the Atrium with Ivy, though? That's another matter entirely! Maybe have to do a fair bit of poly reduction but, we'll see...

[Kadri]

You may be right Martin.
There are some different ivys near the middle, that made me a little suspicious too about the settings.
Anyway  

Edit: I do not remember the link you gave. But that does only say something about my memory. I probably have seen it 
       Nice test Martin.

[Oshyan]

Badger, I can give you access to an FTP account where you could upload >2GB of data, if need be. Would that work? Or do you think the connection might get interrupted before the full 2GB would transfer?

Actually, would I would suggest is this: compress *all* assets of the project with 7-zip or a 7-zip-capable compressor (ZipGenius, IzArc, etc.), and if possible set it to *split* the archive into say 100MB parts. Then you can upload each part individually and if the connection does get interrupted, much less upload time would be lost. Hopefully the 7-zip compression would also being down the file size a fair amount. I've had good luck compressing OBJ files in the past, sometimes up to 40% or better compression.

Let me know when you're ready to transfer and I'll get you the upload access info. Or if you prefer something other than FTP we can work that out too.

- Oshyan