Unfortunately the render of the final image crashed after approx. 25 hours of rendering
I can't tell whether it's due to unstability or due to deficiency in RAM. The following screenshot never used more than 400 MB of RAM to render.
The scene contains 2 populations of each about 12500 instances. The rocks have some reflectivity/specularity so I can imagine that consumes quite some RAM.
One thing I've also noticed is that the TG2 instance was completely gone (sounds like a real crash) but that my computer was also restarted (hence my MSN did show up again).
So I can't tell who to blaim:
Me, for chosing to insane settings.
My computer for not being able to render them.
XP auto-update which possibly rebooted my machine.
I think at the time of the crash 30% of the image was finished.
In the mean time I made 1 screenshot of its progress and here it is. (it's a bad print scr copy pasted in paint. The render size and quality were a LOT better)
As you can see only about 1/8 of the image was finished then but it gives you an impression of the scale I had in mind on this one.
What do you guys think about it? Please take a look at my last update and this one and tell me if the scales look right.
Next week I'll receive my new quad-core rendermachine which will make it certainly possible to finish the render.
So it's a pity I'm on a delay now, but it doesn't really matter. After all it took me almost a week to setup the scene, so 1 week for rendering doesn't bother me.
