Crop preview rendering option in the "3D preview window" ?

[Kadri]

As i was trying to make a new scene today something came to my mind.
Is there a way to make the same crop rendering feature working the same way (as an option probably) in the 3D preview window?
Lightwave does have something similar.
Instead of waiting for the whole scene to finish previewing, in this way it could make for a much faster workflow.

Mostly i see me working on some parts of the scene then the whole.
A shortcut key for the 3D preview crop and maybe one button above the 3D preview window for this feature as an option would be great maybe.

I don't know if this is technically feasible and in any way faster or not of course.
Curious what you will say.


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[WAS]

Yes this would be amazing, as well as panning texture previews to get in line with what camera is seeing. Only get to guess that the pattern/texture/scale is right for camera position because texture previews only load 0x0 coordinates. So then you waste time rendering just to check a texture/layer.

[Hannes]

Although that rendering in a low resolution is sometimes faster than the preview.

[Kadri]

Yes and i said it too to others.
I always think about that Hannes.It looks to me because people see the 3D preview window they expect to see fast preview rendering there obviously.
So if you remind them what you say they kinda ignore it.

The preview window feels easier to handle then pressing all the time CTRL+r .
It is automatic at least.

No matter what, the preview should be faster in this or that way.

[WAS]

At present I notice the preview renderer just crashes on me more then it helps me lol. Usually gets stuck at "rendering 10", or will just never render until I reset the preview renderer. I usually have it paused and just am forced to render cropped preview renders.

And then with terrain editing, it's very much a guessing game as I cannot pan my terrain previews while working on each shader.

[Kadri]

At present I notice the preview renderer just crashes on me more then it helps me lol. Usually gets stuck at "rendering 10", or will just never render until I reset the preview renderer. I usually have it paused and just am forced to render cropped preview renders...

Graphics card issue? You know your way around computers. Had you mentioned it here before?

[Kadri]

Looks like everybody except me,WASasquatch and a little bit Hannes is pleased with long preview render times 

[WAS]

It's done it on numerous systems, 9600GT, HD7770, Intel Integrated Graphics 256mb edition, just seems to be bad computing on the applications side. For example, renderer is still restarted upon dragging nodes, so I get crashes religiously from organizing. So I have to pause the renderer just to sort things, or forget and wonder why it's locking up. Nothing should trigger the render to restart unless I change shader settings or plug different nodes.

I had mentioned the lag before when were were talking about preview render problems with 3.2.x, including node dragging restarting render. Though I haven't upgraded the demo in awhile. Kinda like when I had TG2 Demo and didn't visit for two years and TG3 came out. Lol

[Kadri]

If you have one of the older Terragen builds i remember that this was a problem then.
With the latest builds i haven't heard much complain about this problem for a while.

[Ariel DK]

I also think this is a good idea Kadri, and although the preview works for me, When the project becomes very complex, the workflow becomes also too slow, anyway, I just wanted to tell you, That the preview of your project looks great, I would like to know what it is. 

[Kadri]

Yeah in the preview and with low quality it looked good to me too
Unfortunately the bigger versions turned out bad. It is on hold until a can figure out a way to make them better.

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[Matt]

For example, renderer is still restarted upon dragging nodes, so I get crashes religiously from organizing. So I have to pause the renderer just to sort things, or forget and wonder why it's locking up. Nothing should trigger the render to restart unless I change shader settings or plug different nodes.

This will be fixed in 3.3.

Matt

[Matt]

A crop mode for the 3D Preview is on our to-do list   I agree that it would be really useful in many situations.

Matt

[Kadri]

A crop mode for the 3D Preview is on our to-do list   I agree that it would be really useful in many situations.

Matt

Great news!Thanks for the info   Any possible time frame Matt? At least if it will be in this 3 point releases or in the new v4 ?

[Matt]

Most like 4.x

Matt