T4 Render time issue

[masc]

Hi,

The setup is quite simple.
Two easy clouds Castellanus type. 10000 and 20000 radius respectively.
I noticed some strange differences in render time.

When not intersecting, the 600*250 image takes 34sec, but when they are, the render takes  more than 10 mn.
The render settings are identical in both renders and are quite low (MD 0.5, AA2, Cloud GI quality seqX1).
See the attached file to get a better idea

unfortunately I need them to intersect 

Thx a lot for your feedback

Chris

[Matt]

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum!

I'm going to try to improve the speed of multi-cloud setups in the near future. It's very important that we can build up skies with many clouds and cloud layers.

Cloud GI Quality @ Sequence x1 should be considered a high setting (it is higher than Still/Very high), although it might be needed for rendering final quality animations. When the Cloud GI settings are high, this adds to the render times of low-res images almost as much as high-res renders, because the voxel resolution is independent of image resolution. When you come to render at full res the impact won't be as bad as it seems. For general scene development you could lower this quality setting.

Matt

[mhaze]

I've had similar problems but what frustrates me the most is the way the previews slows everything down with multiple cloud set ups.

[masc]

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum!

I'm going to try to improve the speed of multi-cloud setups in the near future. It's very important that we can build up skies with many clouds and cloud layers.

Cloud GI Quality @ Sequence x1 should be considered a high setting (it is higher than Still/Very high), although it might be needed for rendering final quality animations. When the Cloud GI settings are high, this adds to the render times of low-res images almost as much as high-res renders, because the voxel resolution is independent of image resolution. When you come to render at full res the impact won't be as bad as it seems. For general scene development you could lower this quality setting.

Matt

Thx Matt, I didn't realize that Cloud GI Quality @ Sequence x1 was such a high setting.
I will give it a try.
I was wondering, are those easy clouds a collection of standard Terragen nodes with the right tweaks?

Chris

[Matt]

I was wondering, are those easy clouds a collection of standard Terragen nodes with the right tweaks?

There's a lot of new code built into the Easy Cloud node. It may be possible to create similar clouds using other techniques, but that would be a big task in itself, and you'd lose many of the automatic adjustments that happen as you change things like the depth or density. It adjusts various things automatically so that it responds well to different combinations of settings, with the goal of making it more difficult to create bad looking clouds. I started with a fairly simple node setup with 2 fractals, but after translating it into C++ code for the Easy Cloud node I spent weeks refining it and trying out different ideas. Originally I was hoping that we could add a 'convert' or 'export to nodes' feature, but I don't think it's feasible anymore. It's definitely not just a bunch of nodes anymore, and it uses some new code that's not exposed anywhere in the UI at the moment. Some of the things it does would be complicated to implement using nodes, at least with the current capabilities of the node system. Some of it could be exported to nodes as a sort of 'snapshot',  but that is difficult from a code maintenance perspective.

Now that Easy Cloud is a "black box", it's harder to fine tune the results, and I realise that's not ideal. I'm going to work on that.

Matt

[Matt]

That said, I might find ways to break the concepts into smaller pieces, and they might inspire some changes in the node system for the future.

Matt

[Dune]

Sounds good. Black boxes may be frustrating at times, without the building blocks themselves to be worked on.

[ajcgi]

The more I see you all playing with the TG4 beta, the more excited I get for the future of Terragen. Currently we're using (mainly me tbh) TG3 in production. Not a huge amount of the work I'm doing would benefit from TG4 at this stage, plus I feel 3 is stable enough for now, but man I love seeing what you're all doing with it, especially this kind of feedback to the developers. Out of all the software types I've dealt with, Planetside are particularly communicative and open minded.
@masc, welcome to the forum! Keep experimenting. Terragen is very powerful once you've tamed it.

[Kadri]

... especially this kind of feedback to the developers. Out of all the software types I've dealt with, Planetside are particularly communicative and open minded.
...

Yes. Lightwave forum is full with "more communication" wish posts. But still nothing since 4 months.
That get's on the nerve and is not acceptable at all. Whatever their reasons are .
I think Planetside has the right balance. Even on the very pleasant side actually.

[masc]

I was wondering, are those easy clouds a collection of standard Terragen nodes with the right tweaks?

There's a lot of new code built into the Easy Cloud node. It may be possible to create similar clouds using other techniques, but that would be a big task in itself, and you'd lose many of the automatic adjustments that happen as you change things like the depth or density. It adjusts various things automatically so that it responds well to different combinations of settings, with the goal of making it more difficult to create bad looking clouds. I started with a fairly simple node setup with 2 fractals, but after translating it into C++ code for the Easy Cloud node I spent weeks refining it and trying out different ideas. Originally I was hoping that we could add a 'convert' or 'export to nodes' feature, but I don't think it's feasible anymore. It's definitely not just a bunch of nodes anymore, and it uses some new code that's not exposed anywhere in the UI at the moment. Some of the things it does would be complicated to implement using nodes, at least with the current capabilities of the node system. Some of it could be exported to nodes as a sort of 'snapshot',  but that is difficult from a code maintenance perspective.

Now that Easy Cloud is a "black box", it's harder to fine tune the results, and I realise that's not ideal. I'm going to work on that.

Matt

In a way that's good news. I spend a few days trying to recreate the shapes you get in the Easy Clouds and the result was never as convincing. At least it's not just a problem of skills.
I think this is exactly the kind of tools we need. I like that I can focus on the layout and compose the sky with small clouds patches it's so versatile.

@ajcgi thx, I've been around for a long time, observing and learning a lot from the forum.

[Mr_Lamppost]

With the exposure of extra controls in beta 2, Variation, Growth; the Easy Cloud pre-sets have become much more versatile and attractive.  I can understand the attraction of an easy to use Easy Cloud black box and striking a balance between Easy and Versatile is never going to please everyone. 

A couple of suggestions:

Change the names in the All Cloud Layer menu to make it clear which use Easy Cloud a and which use Cloud fractal shader v3 and have a customisable density input.

Create a Stand alone Easy Cloud node that could be connected as density input to a Cloud Layer v4 or v3 if possible.  This Easy Cloud node could have additional controls exposed; masking, inputs allowing variation in the Growth and Variation etc. which while useful could be hidden in the Easy Cloud pre-sets.