Darned red render rant

[AndyWelder]

Had three red renders in as many weeks but I'm sure they will be the last because I'm not gonna use TG2 till there's been an update that fixes this.
Yeah, I've unchecked the GI surface details, I've read the posts on that. But a nice dense atmo with high detail settings seems impossible to render. That, and the long render times (This one took 76 hours to get were it was when I aborted it. Hey, 800x600 isn't that extreme big is it?) made me loose my appetite for TG2 for now.
The classic Terragen is still on my machines and I'm sure it'll be much more fun working with that.

If someone with a faster machine than my dedicated 3.2GHz AMD/1.5GB RAM (and a lot of patience) wants to give it a try, be my guest, I've attached the .TGD too.

[rcallicotte]

Set the GI settings to zero.

[AndyWelder]

"Set the GI settings to zero."

That's what I did..

[Inscrutable]

Just to be certain - and I'm really sorry if I'm going over things unnecessarily - but in the tgd file, GI relative Detail and GI Sample Quality are set to 6 for full render and 2 for quick render.  These are the values that need to be changed to 0 in order to get rid of the red death.

I had the same sorts of problems for ages but managed to fix them by simply doing that.

Just clarifying the matter!

[digidon]

I looked at your file and you had the GI values not set to zero.  Don't know if that is the problem, but don't throw away TG2 yet.
Your file renders quite well.

[rcallicotte]

Looks good.  That's a noted issue - GI settings need to be set to zero under certain circumstances.

[AndyWelder]

OK, just to make sure: The render was done with the checkbox for GI surface detail unchecked. AFAIK that means disabled, so, no matter what values used in those fileds, they simply shouldn't have any influence. Or am I missing something here/making wrong assumptions?
Had the same problem in the past and unchecking the box solved them.... Until recently where I started to use more detail in atmo settings.

@ digidon: Yup, that was what I saw in the preview renders with low detail

[rcallicotte]

Yes.  That separate GI checkbox does not control the GI details and samples.

[digidon]

I ran a cropped portion of the full render, 800x600, quality at .5, but set GI to 0.  Ratioing the time for rendering to the full size indicates that the full render should take around 3 hours.  Running two halves on a dual processor simultaneously would cut the time in half.
I'm running a cropped portion with the GI set to 6 and even though I can begin to see a heavily dotted image it is going to take forever to render at this rate. 
Yes, the checkbox is unchecked but unless the actual values are set to zero you've got a problem.

[Oshyan]

The GI Surface Details box *only* controls the GI Surface Details rendering feature. This feature should be turned off in most cases as it has a minimal positive effect on renders except in certain circumstances (where small ground details are critical) and has a very large impact on performance. To disable GI entirely set both GI Relative Detail and GI Sample Quality to 0.

- Oshyan

[AndyWelder]

  Thank you folks for the help; the render is running like greased lightning now.
End of rant