Valley of Whispers WIP

[WAS]

May not get to render this big. While it's just surface layers for colour and a rough PF layer with non-merged rocks, it's still taking way to long to render when it gets towards the ground and bottom of the image.

I have added a nun more recently, but it isn't PT, so her silk isn't as vibrant, and she has no surface shadows.

[RichTwo]

Interesting, though.  Yes, maybe if the figure was out in the light, it'd draw more attention.

[WAS]

Yeah. I wanted the focus to be more on the terrain which is why I casted the foreground in shadow. The nun was a find after the fact that fit the Nepal/Tibet scene. I wanted more though, [prayer] flags and stuff on string but haven't found the best approach to make something like that, as simple as it sounds.

Larger ST render as I'm noticing some things I want to change in the BG before I attempt another PT.

[Dune]

Alpine is slow, but still, I think an image this size would ST render (on my machine) within an hour. Maybe your ground structures are too complex? I don't actually know how PT handles reflections in a default shader or a no-RT reflective shader (I have to read up on it), but if it calculates it like RT, even simple reflective surfaces on rough ground can take a lot of time, while 'real' reflections are not needed at all.

[cyphyr]

Alpine speeds up A LOT if you mask out the stuff you don't need. (Or rather mask in the stuff you do need, ie, only in front of the camera and not further than can bee seen).

[Tangled-Universe]

Nice work Jordan on the surfaces/textures. I wish TG had a gradient editor, similar to Gaea and other software.
Making complex textures rich in colours and variations would be so so much easier and faster with such an editor.

[WAS]

This alpine has been eroded, and non-heightmap terrain disabled so I don't think its effecting things. Heightmaps are pretty fast cause of low terrain quality. 

There is also no reflective shaders except the distant snow, which all that seems to render normally. Its just this bottom half of PT renders that slows to am absolute crawl despite full buckets running. Even CPU is only around 50-75% load with all cores going. Other people have noticed this too with PT. With full buckets Working and half the image to go you'd imagine 100% usage would be seen. I think i may end up puting some light on the foreground. I think im seeing not only half image slowdown but also slowdown of interior like lighting all in shadows. Every time i do a cave or interior cabin/house scene PT is super duper slow to begin with.

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes I see that too when rendering with PT, but interestingly enough it's not consistent (here).
Some scenes I have 50% utilization and some scenes >95%.
There should be a reason for this and if you'd ask me there's some code inefficiency or whatever inefficiency leading to CPU-underutilization, but I'm not an expert.

[WAS]

I think I can confirm it's areas cast in shadow, because this version rendered in only 1hr 15m in SR vs about 2 and a half hours. Additionally, the area in light where the monk/nun is, rendered and finished (to the bottom of the render frame) before the area just to the left (which had 3 rows left), with, of course, some shadow. This all being translated to PT I could see it being why, and my Dune scene was similar circumstances where because of the sand and low sun, the ground was mainly cast in shadow. A shame really as I liked the idea of looking out into the valley and mountains in a dreamy light.

Interestingly this doesn't seem to effect shadows at a distance? They all seem to render fine. Just up close, so maybe something with the adaptive sample/geometry.

[Dune]

So, what if you animate in 2 frames and do two 50% renders? Would that go faster? Or the upside down-trick.

[DocCharly65]

Nice scenery! I especially like the darker version.

[WAS]

So, what if you animate in 2 frames and do two 50% renders? Would that go faster? Or the upside down-trick.

Yeah that may be the rick. I also wonder if I really need to Path Trace. The whole reason is to get the ground shadows for the nun, and the more vibrant silk (though SR doesn't look too bad with GGX and dialectics -- is there even a difference now? I should compare). I think I can get away with just a SR, and than render out a crop of the nun in PT and composite it in.

Thanks Doc! I did some v2 clouds and seeing how that helps with rendering the shadows. I dunno, maybe it'll help.

[WAS]

Adjust all the terrain displacement. I like this setup, minus the noise-based ground roughness on the foreground. It did not translate from 1k to 4k at all and is way to rough. Lol. Should have spot checked it. Clouds are v2 now, which is a little faster, but now looks funny. I dunno. Lol

[sboerner]

Foreground is a little rough, but the mountain range and foothills are amazing, especially with that light.

[DocCharly65]

I like the new look.