Flabbergasted by render time

[bobbystahr]

One of my reasons to participate here was to learn to understand and write better in English.
Not sure how much it worked but yeah that should not stop anyone

You are completely intelligible to me Kadri...well done.

[Kadri]

One of my reasons to participate here was to learn to understand and write better in English.
Not sure how much it worked but yeah that should not stop anyone

You are completely intelligible to me Kadri...well done.

[Oshyan]

The fact that you are a non-native English speaker seldom - if ever - crosses my mind Kadri.

- Oshyan

[Kadri]

The fact that you are a non-native English speaker seldom - if ever - crosses my mind Kadri.

- Oshyan

Thanks Oshyan

[jdent02]

Yeah, your English is pretty good.  I've heard native speakers that are less intelligible 

On the main topic, is there water being viewed at grazing angles (as in looking towards the horizon)?  This has always caused HUGE slowdowns for me, so much so that I either avoid that kind of shot or I use 'defer atmosphere' (which seems to help).

[AndyWelder]

Not sure what is meant by "grazing angles" so here's the merge of the full render (without water) and the partial render with water so you can see for yourself. And judging from some of the other versions of this project the extra amount of bouncing light introduced by the water is indeed causing the extreme long render time. In this case the corner with the water in it took almost 6 hour to render and though the .GIC used did NOT contain any water there is still a huge difference in the way the vegetation is lit in that partial render. Oh, the full render without water was completed in little over 5 hours.

[Dune]

A render like this shouldn't take long at all! Maybe 30mins on an i7. Did you mask out the area where water is not visible? That would save a little render time. BTW, terrific rocks.

[AndyWelder]

Did you mask out the area where water is not visible?

Yup, the water is masked the dandelO way  And the CPU is a i5 

[Dune]

Yeah, but did that work alright? Have you checked? In this case a simple shape or painted area where the water is will also do, painted from top down. Also sorting bias of the lake at -1000000 will help.

[AndyWelder]

The mask for the water is painted; the plane used is 110x280, just enough to cover the area. A version with the traditional lake at the smallest required size didn't change a thing , abandoned that method after 25 minutes and even less water rendered.

[Dune]

So that's probably not why it took so long. Just curious what did that.

[Ashley]

Just wondering,

Looking at the rock structures, can these shapes be converted to geometry and re-textured? or is it possible to "bake" to vector displacement?

With all the undercuts baking to a heightfield isn't an option but I think if these shapes didn't require calculating a procedural shader the whole scene would render a lot faster.