Higher detail or Downsampling

[buchvecny]

TG2 officials said there wont be need for downsampling in TG2. I trust that on detail 1 downsampling wont help anything. But detail 1 takes tremenderous times to render. Im wondering if downsampled detail 0.8 would get better render time and same looking render... well if u got what i mean i dont really know how to express myself now lol

[Njen]

Check this out. I made this page to illustrate the changes of AA and detail. You can see that 0.6 gives very high quality indeed (if you have enough samples in your clouds and atmosphere):

http://www.motionmagnetic.com/terragen2/render.html

[moodflow]

Technically, downsampling (assuming we have the same definition here) would not be required b/c the level of detail is sub-pixel at whatever resolution - which is the magic of procedural programming.  Of course non-procedural imported elements like 3d models or images do not apply.

[Oshyan]

Downsampling should theoretically never be faster than the best balance of detail settings. Achieving that good balance may be difficult in some cases, but I think it's worth getting to know the specifics of TG2's detail settings rather than trying to find the right oversampling resolution, which may be dependent on the scene just like the detail settings. Meanwhile the detail settings give you far more versatility and control than a simple downsample.

- Oshyan

[efflux]

In my experience this all depends on the content of the render but I would say downsampling is probably not needed if you get the original balance of render settings just right. However, I do have a render going at the moment which I have had to give very high detail and AA settings because it has lots of very narrow, long and contrasting but slightly modulating details, meaning that if I don't use these high setting I will get a lot of pixelated looking lines running across the render. Smaller details in the distance such as stones or grass can also cause problems because they are details at pixel level that will can noisy results unless the render settings are appropriate to smooth it.

By the way, in the situations I describe above, what is best to tweak higher - detail or anti-aliasing. Ot what kind of relationship between the two. Is the answer to concentrate mostly on anti-aliasing to smooth these pixelations?

[Njen]

AA deals specifically with high frequency noise. For example, if you have a look at the renders done at a detail of 0.1 here:
http://www.motionmagnetic.com/terragen2/render.html
you will see that increasing the AA makes the ground look a lot better, but hardly affects the clouds and sky.

[oggyb]

But renders that have low detail and lots of antialiasing usually look over-smooth or even blurred (imo).

M.

[Superza]

TG2 officials said there wont be need for downsampling in TG2. I trust that on detail 1 downsampling wont help anything.

I can only, confirm your trust.
Tried to render a quality 1 @1600*1000;
The resize+sharpen process (that usually dramatically boost the quality of  an old terragen 0.x render) didnt boost anything.

Regards Max

[buchvecny]

cool guyz thx  (super stupid smilies annoy me..)

[efflux]

I agree that too much ant-aliasing can smooth things too much. it's tricky to get the balance right. I always go higher with detail than your tests njen. For a final render I always go at least detail level 1. In fact I have gone much higher but it depends on the scene.

[Njen]

Interesting. I find that I never have to go above 0.7 for near perfect results. Saves a bunch on rendering time too

[MeltingIce]

Yea I usually like to do .8 detail and 5 antialiasing.  I also render at either 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 so more smoothing is better for me, especially if I downsize the image.

[efflux]

I've got a kind of difficult render going at the moment. Under tests even detail 1 was not sufficient but usually that is what I set for final render but I agree that less could be OK. I experimented quite a lot with this scene. I decided it needed AA of 3 or 4 but even boosting the detail right up to 3 or 4 I could tell the difference. Detail 1 was obviously very inferior in comparison but usually this is not the case. I guess it's to do with what I explained before about lots of lines across the picture which need the higher rendering settings. So this render is a test of higher settings. I'd rather not repeat this again. Way too long render time.

[efflux]

Maybe the problem is that geometry was stretched along an axis. The final render will be fine but it needed more detail than usual.

[Oshyan]

Efflux, sounds like you've got a pretty extreme scene going there. I'd be interested in seeing the scene once completed as I have seldom seen anything that requires higher than detail 2, and even that is rare. I suspect extreme displacement is involved.

- Oshyan