How to avoid water being rendered...

Started by AndyWelder, July 12, 2008, 06:55:00 AM

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AndyWelder

if most of the water doesn't show up in the completed render?
It took almost 2 hours to render this image and the time TG spent on rendering the water was an hour and a halve! The water was rendered up to the horizon (Voorbeeld) though in the completed image there is only a small strip showing at the bottom of the image.(Voorbeeld2)

How can I avoid all this invisible water being rendered and cut down on render times?
"Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" Karel Appel

Tangled-Universe

Yes this is inconvenient aspect of TG's current renderer. The backface culling or clipping, whatever it is named, isn't that advanced yet so the renderer can't decide/predict really accurate where to render the water and where not. It is performed during rendertime.

A work-around which works for me is to create a new camera and raise this above your scene and make it face down 90 degrees to your render camera. Set it up so that the render camera and the edge/shoreline where you want your water to be are visible in the preview.
Go to your waterobject and set the translation coordinates the same as your rendercamera and decrease the radius of the waterobject. You can measure the desired radius roughly by using your mouse in the preview window.
You'll see that the default radius is way too big for your scene.
Set the radius just a little bit bigger than is necessary just to make sure it reaches the shoreline in the whole image.
Keep in mind that it is circular and that on the far left and right side of the image the waterplane could not be visible. It is then a matter of putting the translation coordinates of the water object a couple of hundred meters behind your camera and increase the radius of the waterplane.

You now have essentially created a much smaller waterplane which just fills your area of interest without having it to render throughout the horizon :)
If you need any help just PM me...since I'm dutch as well this wouldn't be too difficult ;)

Martin

AndyWelder

Aahh, brilliant workaround!
Could have thought of this myself because it's basically what I do with populations of vegetation...
I don't create another camera though. I wait till the preview is at 40 detail rendered, then pause the render and move the camera way up and then have it look down: The result is a triangle that's corresponding with the part of the terrain visible in the render. Then I hover with the mouse pointer over the area and write down the coordinates of the desired center. The coordinates are then transferred into the "Area centre" boxes of the population. Then I lower the values for the "Area length" A and B so that the population ends just outside of the camera view. To refine the distribution I populate with "Preview instances" checked so I can determine what "Seed" and "Object spacing" to use. If the distribution looks OK I switch back to the current render camera view.
"Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" Karel Appel

bobbystahr

#3
Also as the water is a scalable disc move it's center to the middle of where you want the water to be and size it accordingly at that point in the Lake dialogue.. ...
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Tangled-Universe

Yup, in the end it all means the same as I explained ;D
Like populations it's always best to limit the water's area to render. Costs less RAM and less backface culling/clipping.

MH

bobbystahr

Sorry Martin, I didn't read your post fully before I bashed off my solution...great minds and all that.. ...
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist