Tree outline trough fog in TG3

[Mohawk20]

I've just purchased TG3, and love working with it.
I opened a file I just got some help with, with clouds following the terrain.
Now that works I got trees in the mist, which has to be tuned down a bit. But in the renders I used to test I found a strange effect that I'm not sure should be there.
I`f you look at the images below you can see that trees which should be completely concealed by the clouds are still visible by their outline.

Is there a setting that turns this on and off, or is it a bug?

[Hetzen]

Not sure I understand the problem. The cloud looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do, ie trees become faded as the density in the cloud adds up through depth. Your cloud fractal has gaps in it's pattern, so seeing trees through these gaps (as seen in your above cloud layer render) looks right.

Not a solution, but I wondered if Recieve shadows from surface, would add definition to light passing through your trees. It will bump up render times of course. Just curious to know if it would work with objects instead of landscape.

Anyway, looks like you've got the nodes to work from the previous thread, and I notice you've localised the cloud so that it doesn't flatline when the terrain rises above the peak of the cloud depth. Nice scene.

Cheers

Jon

[Mohawk20]

To make sure the problem is clear, I adjusted the levels and cropped the renders to show where the problem lies.
The arrows point to obvious outlines of the objects, while the objects themselves are not visible or much lighter coloured than the outline.

[Hetzen]

Ahh ok, I see what you're looking at. Weird one, I've not seen that before. Do you have GI Surface details checked in the render GI settings? Might be that.

[Mohawk20]

Nope, GI Surface details is unchecked.

[Oshyan]

Strange. I would have first asked about GIS D as well. What Pixel Filter are you using?

- Oshyan

[Mohawk20]

I always use Narrow Cubic, has the best mix for me.

[Oshyan]

Hmm, and is antialiasing bloom enabled? And you're sure GI SD is off?

- Oshyan

[Matt]

This is a bug that goes back to Terragen 2.2. It can happen if you use "defer atmo/cloud" and adaptive pixel sampling. If you switch to "max samples (non-adaptive)" in the pixel sampler it should go away, but beware that you may need to reduce anti-aliasing if you don't want this to increase render times.

The bug was reported quite recently by someone else but I don't remember anyone noticing it before then, so probably isn't noticeable in most situations. It's on my to-do list to fix this but it is not at the highest priority because it is apparently quite rare.

Matt

[Mohawk20]

Setting the sampler to "Max Samples" did the trick!

Matt, would you like a copy of the file, so you can use it to find the bug?

[Upon Infinity]

By sheer happenstance, I just encountered the same problem.  Which is odd, as I use defer atmo/cloud all the time.  In this case, however, it's occurring on imported geometry.  Not sure if that's the cause, but I usually do not have imported geometry (other than trees) in my scenes.  Also, in my case, the effect did not go away.  Do you have to tamper with the actual samples as well?

[Oshyan]

OK, but are *you* (Upon Infinity) sure that GISD isn't on?

- Oshyan

[Upon Infinity]

OK, but are *you* (Upon Infinity) sure that GISD isn't on?

- Oshyan

Well, it is on, but isn't it supposed to be?  Or can I only have either defer atmo/cloud OR GISD but not both?  It sort of sounded like Mohawk20 got both to work...

[Oshyan]

You can definitely have both on, but GISD is not ideal in every situation (it works well in a majority however). As with the rare bug that was originally reported above, there are situations where its effect might not be ideal. It's worth trying to disable it and see if this is one of those situations. You could also try adjusting the values, for example "Occlusion Weight" (reduce it).

- Oshyan

[Matt]

That looks like a separate issue with GISD and DoF.