Population cache problem

[cyphyr]

I'm rendering a population over part of a terrain made with a 2+ GB bitmap (30K square).
The population takes ages to render so I went for a population cache so it wouldn't have to populate for every machine on the farm.
However I'm seeing the source model rendering at the origin (0,0,0) even though it's set to "Member of a population".
This is "not good" and I'm getting grief from my sup!
Any suggestions as to why this should be and how to avoid it.
I'm leaning towards it being an out of memory issue or something along those lines ...

[Dune]

I think I've seen this complaint before.... I don't know what causes it, though.

[zaxxon]

I see a similar issue fairly often with large populations. However it's not isolated to the origin mesh.  Some instances don't show as 'bounding boxes' preview, but show up in the render. I usually preview the instances as 'textured' and then delete the unwanted ones. Sometimes the 'hidden' instances will be revealed even in bounding box mode with a mouse roll-over. Don't know if this is your specific issue, but manual deletion is the only thing that works for me.

[cyphyr]

@Dune. Yes I think I have seen this before or at least something similar. A quick search brought up a thread from Bobby where he had as similar issue, that seemed to be down to masking isues ... which "could" just be at fault here ... don't think so though.

@Zaxxon. It's the original object that is being populated so I don't want to delete it or edit it's position. The former would cause an empty population and the latter would alter the nature and character of the population.

I have re-made the terrain as a .ter file and dropped it's res a little (now 28k vs 32k) and it populated noticeably faster ... this may be enough for the farm ...

[Oshyan]

Interesting, we haven't seen this problem here at Planetside. Would you possibly be able to share the scene file, or a minimal version of it that still reproduces the problem? Contact us at support AT planetside.co.uk

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

I'm rendering a population over part of a terrain made with a 2+ GB bitmap (30K square).
The population takes ages to render so I went for a population cache so it wouldn't have to populate for every machine on the farm.
However I'm seeing the source model rendering at the origin (0,0,0) even though it's set to "Member of a population".
This is "not good" and I'm getting grief from my sup!
Any suggestions as to why this should be and how to avoid it.
I'm leaning towards it being an out of memory issue or something along those lines ...

I notice this quite often and resolve it temporarily by reseeding and re saving the cache, but it often, well always once it's reared it's head, comes back..... and it's with many sizes of pops as well.

[Oshyan]

Bobby, next time you notice it can you please save the scene file and cache files and send them all to us? It would be very helpful!

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

Bobby, next time you notice it can you please save the scene file and cache files and send them all to us? It would be very helpful!

- Oshyan

Will do, sorry for the response time...been tweaking on the offline computer mostly. I'll gather it. Oddly it hasn't happened since this thread started(he knocks on wood product and crosses fingers).

[edlo]

Confirmed the source member of a population appears at 0 - 0 - 0 inconsistently removed through re-populating and comes back. My population its quite large so trying to edit and select the instance for deleting it proves quite impossible.
My file its a production file so cant be shared.

[bobbystahr]

Confirmed the source member of a population appears at 0 - 0 - 0 inconsistently removed through re-populating and comes back. My population its quite large so trying to edit and select the instance for deleting it proves quite impossible.
My file its a production file so cant be shared.

Even with a small pop it can't be selected or deleted as it's the reference for all the instances..not happy someone else is experiencing this but glad I'm not the only one.

[Dune]

Still a weird phenomena. I tried with a couple of objects and seeds, but never get a 0/0/0 instance. Setting the base object to invisible doen't help, if there were, btw.

[Timoz]

Hi,

I'm getting the same problem in Terragen 4, in fact I've seen this before but the "original" geo was hidden below ground so wasn't an issue.  Has anyone found a way to fix this?

To reiterate the issue.  I have a large tree population which renders fine until it is cached, at which point the original tree geo (that which is being referenced by the instances) suddenly joins in and renders at the origin of the scene.  In my current project that happens to be right in the middle of the action, so is somewhat intrusive.

[WAS]

I wonder if this has to do with populations based on images? I've been caching all my populations recently and I have yet to come across this, but I always use a distribution shader and PF for masking.

[Oshyan]

We still have yet to get a scene file demonstrating this, and we can't replicate it on our machines here. Until we're able to do that it's very hard to troubleshoot. Anyone want to volunteer a TGD?

- Oshyan

[Timoz]

Oshyan - I'll try and send you a scene in the morning.  I am using an image to control distribution, so maybe it is that.  I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it!