Hey guys and gals, we have much fuller support for GI handling in Terragen scenes now.
I haven't updated our online manual yet, but will be shortly. Artists no longer need to pre-render GI passes for frame ranges or stills, as we automatically detect if GI is used in the scene. If GI is detected, we automatically render and store a cache prior to the final render pass. After completion of the cache (single node if still and multiple nodes governed by job priority if a frame range), the job is re-submitted to the farm for the final pass. We deliver GI pass completion percentage to our client GUI, so you know how far along the job is. GI caches for a tiled still are rendered by only one node, so keep that in mind if you're concerned about performance.
We still allow (and automatically detect) if you pre-render a GI cache for your scene and submit it with the job. We only create a GI cache if your scene uses GI but was uploaded without a cache. All artist controls remain untouched, so you still control how many frames to blend across a range.
The only GI feature we don't currently support is the automatic creation of a sparse cache. Don't worry, that's next on the list.
Using our new automated GI handling is easy...just submit your Terragen job as normal, we take care of the rest.
More news as it comes. Oh yeah...I'll post a video soon that shows off an animated scene that uses our new GI handling.