Terragen 2 Release Announcement Discussion

Started by Oshyan, December 12, 2007, 07:10:04 PM

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moodflow

I figure I'll be honest and speak my mind.  I'm starting to lose the interest in making new images due to the bugs and very slow rendertimes at this point.  I know they have some of these issues resolved.  I wish they would release what they do have, so work, play, and research can continue.  I am really for micro-updates, as this makes the product more functional for the user.

Otherwise, I am behind Planetside, 100%.

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nikita

That's pretty much how I'm thinking about that too.
It's hard to actually use the program when you run into bugs and day-long renders as soon as you create something that's not an average image. The more powerful a feature is, the less likely its stable.

If Planetside needs more than the "few weeks" announced on 4th of january, a new announcement would be nice. (It's been almost five weeks and we're getting out of "few".)

I'm looking forward to the beta. :) I got several projects that need a stable TG2 so I can actually render them the way I want.

Will

Yea but its planetside, by "a few more weeks" it means keep essentially "when its done"

I also use it less then I use to but it more because I'm doing studies in XSI.
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

sjefen

Quote from: moodflow on February 06, 2008, 06:11:44 PM
I figure I'll be honest and speak my mind.  I'm starting to lose the interest in making new images due to the bugs and very slow rendertimes at this point.  I know they have some of these issues resolved.  I wish they would release what they do have, so work, play, and research can continue.  I am really for micro-updates, as this makes the product more functional for the user.

Otherwise, I am behind Planetside, 100%.



I agree. I need faster rendertime and support for multicore. I don't do much with Terragen these days.

Quote from: nikita on February 06, 2008, 06:49:49 PM
If Planetside needs more than the "few weeks" announced on 4th of january, a new announcement would be nice. (It's been almost five weeks and we're getting out of "few".)

That would be nice. I like a little more info.
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rcallicotte

@Moodflow - I've found just distancing myself from TG2 helps.  I've completely just relegated my time to experimentation without rendering or to only rendering to find out what something might do.  Scenes aren't coming out like I want and I'm actually amazed how you and others have been able to come up with such incredible stuff.

@Planetside - Programming is a science and an art.  I'd rather you take your time and do it the very best you can.  An announcement, as others have suggested, would do a lot to keep people from pulling their hair out.  Telling us what's going on, since we're your testers as well, would go a long way towards helping us trust you.

Of course, as always, this is what I'm thinking.  Without knowing all the ins and outs, it leaves me somewhat riding the fence, which is where I'll stay until the next release.
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Oshyan

Unfortunately there's not much to "announce" except that work continues and there is progress. It is slow - much slower than we'd like - but there's no getting around it. We would have released more frequent updates before now except that the renderer overhaul really makes it difficult to do interim releases. We've essentially torn apart the entire rendering process and are now rebuilding it piece by piece so it is multithreaded and scalable. Until all the pieces are back together it's difficult or impossible to just shoehorn "what's been done so far" into a release that you can all play with. All the parts of the whole have to work together to show improvement and be stable, so as much as we'd like to be giving you more to chew on in the meantime, it's just not feasible.

- Oshyan

dhavalmistry

Quote from: Oshyan on February 06, 2008, 11:09:21 PM
Unfortunately there's not much to "announce" except that work continues and there is progress. It is slow - much slower than we'd like - but there's no getting around it. We would have released more frequent updates before now except that the renderer overhaul really makes it difficult to do interim releases. We've essentially torn apart the entire rendering process and are now rebuilding it piece by piece so it is multithreaded and scalable. Until all the pieces are back together it's difficult or impossible to just shoehorn "what's been done so far" into a release that you can all play with. All the parts of the whole have to work together to show improvement and be stable, so as much as we'd like to be giving you more to chew on in the meantime, it's just not feasible.

- Oshyan

appreciate the straight up answer Oshyan!...


talking about being stable....I have been using TG2 on vista ultimate 64-bit since the latest update and I have to admit that it hasnt crashed or froze even once.....as far as stability of the program is concerned...its very good at the moment!....I was actually surprised when I realized this...no other windows application has worked so seemingly for me when it comes to stability....
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Seth


JimB

I'm still using it a lot in production. Coming from the days were all painting was done using a house brick (mouse) I just factor in the long render times and try to make a scene as efficient as possible. I still keep stumbling across things that improve the look as well as learning the app more, and when it comes to the proper release it'll just mean better and faster rendering  ;)

Will, nice one with learning XSI, my other weapon of choice  :)
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Will

The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

rcallicotte

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

moodflow

Oshyan, yes many thanks for the information.   8)
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mood-inspiring images and music

buchvecny

finally some specific words from you oshyan :)

Harvey Birdman

Not to rain on the parade, but...

Frankly, I have a real problem believing any of this. My trust dissipated when I read here in the forum that an entire new rendering system was being incorporated 6 weeks (IIRC) before the widely publicized planned release. Let's be real, shall we? You don't completely replace a critical (indeed, central) component of a complex system with a new, completely untested version if you have any intention of releasing it within 6 weeks. The fact that Planetside did just that, while publicly maintaining the release would happen on schedule, says to me that there is a disconnect between information released here and their real intentions/evaluations. It's nice the latest 'status report' has given some of you the warm fuzzies; personally, I'm a little dubious.

Fenring

While i appreciate the new information, If i have to speak my mind ill say this technology preview release is just bad PR, i use the old terragen for texture making in the battlefield 2 series (with a little help from photoshop) and had great hopes for terragen 2 to improve in this department but also to make skydomes that would be signifigantly better than in old TG, but since the render times are so long and many of the atmosphere features undocumented i find it incredibly incredibly frustrating to work with. For ground textures the minimum resolution is 1024x1024 but more common is 4096x4096 in bigger bf2 levels, also skydomes are 1024x1024 5 render pictures. Later converted to a hemisphere in HDRshop. I think i have made one skybox that i was satisfied with in more than half a year. With render times of 3 days for an entire skydome (that looked good in preview but crap in final version). Also other issues like GI cant be used in skydomes, top down view button missing for quick texture rendering.

With times of learning and render speed like this the TG2 preview is for my production completely useless! I had great hopes for the beta and was confident that now i could finaly write a tutorial about skybox making in this program, unfortunately it didnt happen. Also the team im working on was in desperate need of new skydomes so it ended with me buying a new DVD with skybox textures (360 degree pictures made by specialized photographers) that cost more than the double of the TG2 preview  :( This also is because terragen 0.9 cant compete in this department for newer games anymore. So baiscly i have ditched terragen2 and gone back to the old terragen for texture making and skyboxes now sadly comes from another source. Planetside really should have waited to release this until it was beta since the current release is making people angry. At one time I was so angry after trying for several weeks just learning the basic functions that i considered giving my license away.

This may sound very harsh but I think Planetside should get feedback from all sorts of users, maybe my expectations very to high (since the old terragen was so good) and maybe people who work with terragen 2 for other purposes than mine get more out of it.