Evaluating Terragen for quality.

[pixo]

Hello.  I am currently evaluating Terragen 2 and Vue.  T2 appears to be able to generate very high quality images although in some of my tests, I have been unable to reduce noise to an acceptable level.  I am guessing that might require a higher AA level than is available in the free version.  It is also not possible to evaluate high resolution quality in the free version.

I would be very interested in any comments from users about these two issues.  Are there cases where noise cannot be eliminated?  What issues have you run into when rendering hi-res (6000 plus pixels LD.)


Thank you very much for your help.

Terry

[Dune]

As far as I know, noise can be eliminated completely (higher AA, indeed). The only issue is the memory you need to work on really large files (lots of complicated geometry, objects and huge clouds). If that's sufficient, you'll be able to produce very high quality renders with higher settings of AA and detail.

[pixo]

Thank you Dune.  Memory is usually an issue when rendering high resolution images but sometimes there are workarounds.  For example, I have rendered very large images with extreme displacement on fairly modest hardware by rendering smaller image segments and comping them back together in PS.  I don't know if this is possible in TG but maybe using the render crop tool would work.  Or maybe one could creating a camera with a smaller field of view and accurately moving it around the scene to capture high-res sections.

From the lack of responses, I am thinking TG may not be that efficient for hi-res work...

[Upon Infinity]

I'm not sure what noise you're referring to.  I've found most of my noise issues stemmed not from AA, but from atmosphere quality.  And I've always been able to get it sufficiently clear.

[Dune]

From the lack of responses, I am thinking TG may not be that efficient for hi-res work...

I think one of the staff needs to fill you in on that, but my experience with 10.000x5000 pixel renders (by a renderfarm) is very positive.

[Tangled-Universe]

I suppose a very easy way to evaluate is to take a look at the official gallery at the Planetside website and keep in mind that basically all of those were created with the deep(+animation) version.

[masonspappy]

Are there cases where noise cannot be eliminated?  What issues have you run into when rendering hi-res (6000 plus pixels LD.)

I don't think I've ever seen an instance where noise could not be eliminated.  It comes down to understanding the subtle influences certain settings have upon images (it may not be immediatly obvious).  IMHO Terragen is consistently able to produce images superior to Vue.

[Tangled-Universe]

There are of course situations where every renderer has issues with.

For TG2 it's relatively 'expensive' (rather than difficult) to get absolute noise free vegetation rendering.
Same goes for shadows being cast into the atmosphere by dense clouds.
Soft shadows are also not very good in TG2, but luckily this is strongly obscured by the lack of smooth surfaces and shading in natural landscapes.
In these 3 cases you need a lot of AA samples, atmosphere samples or soft shadow samples respectively.

So there are almost always solutions, but as with every renderer it will have its costs.

[pixo]

Thank you all for your thoughts.  I spent quite a bit of time the other day going through forum posts and found many hints that I had not discovered in the documentation.  First of all the TG interface is quite a bit different than what I have been used.  As I continue to dig into it more, it is becoming more "friendly" and easy to work with.  Also, once I realized that many of the setting will accept input beyond their slider maximums, I have been able to minimize most of the noise I was objecting to.

I have not experimented with vegetation yet but have not been that impressed with Vue's implementation and quality.

The resolution question will probably have to be answered through a purchase which I think is approaching quickly.

[Tangled-Universe]

For large resolution you can often reduce sampling a bit in general.
Because you increase the resolution you also increase the space you're sampling in.
This means that if you double your resolution you will "collect" 4x more samples if you don't touch the settings.
So often you can tune them a bit down because the higher resolution itself already provides more detail and can potentially reduce strong contrasts which requires more sampling.
It's a bit difficult to explain, but I hope you understand.
Richard (Cyphyr) recently performed a huge render with drastically reduced settings which gave an almost exact same outcome as the small version with much higher sampling for atmosphere and GI, for example.

What will come free with the license is this community
If you run into issues and you can't find anything with the search then just ask here.
Bet you have an answer within less than a day.

[PabloMack]

If you are only doing stills then I think color and spacial noise elimination should be no problem with Terragen 2 given adequate computing power to complete in a reasonable time.

[pixo]

For large resolution you can often reduce sampling a bit in general.

What will come free with the license is this community

Thanks T-U.  Excellent advice and I think this community will be a valuable asset.  For hi-res work I am less worried about image noise than I am about displacement resolution (noise octaves).  At this point, however, I can only render to 800 pixels.

PabloMack - For now, I will only be making stills and I can be very patient... sometimes.  Thanks.

[Oshyan]

I don't think noise octaves should be an issue. You can easily do animation of a single scene from orbit to ground level and maintain detail the whole way. Terragen can represent detail down to the centimeter level (millimeter can get problematic). So unless the majority of your scenes will be operating at very small scales, the detail available from the fractal functions shouldn't be a limitation for you.

- Oshyan

[pixo]

Oshyan,

I would be happy with centimeters.  When working in more traditional (standard?) 3D environments, I have had to be "creative" to achieve high quality displacement at high resolution.

I am wondering, are there any plans (even distant) to integrate vegetation into Terragen?  Might just make it easier and better based on what has been accomplished so far.

 

[Oshyan]

Terragen is all about high quality, high detail displacement. So I don't think you'll have any problems there.

Creating an "integrated" plant solution is quite a big task indeed, and there are already quite a few good systems in existence that create models which can be used with Terragen. Our general focus for the future will be to work on improving the functionality for making use of imported models, with the dual aim of achieving higher quality results, and making them easier to work with inside of Terragen.

- Oshyan