large images: 4 camera positions then stitch?

Started by Dune, March 09, 2009, 07:41:35 AM

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Dune

This is my first attempt at asking something, so I hope this works.
To produce large images (4000x6000 pixels and up) from one complicated landscape (which, in my renders, often crash), I think it should be possible to make 4 POV's with some overlap, and combine the largest renders possible (say 2000x3000, without cropping) in a stitching program or Photoshop. Would this work, and how can you easily get these 4 POV's from an initial POV that has the right framing and rendersize?
Can anyone shed some light on this?

Mohawk20

Does the render crash if you do crop renders of the full size?
Howgh!

Dune

Yes, exactly. I have tried several ideas found in forums; pre-allocating RAM, decreasing it, decreasing the quality of the objects, turning off GI (using extra sunlight instead), rebooting first. Of course nothing else is on whilst rendering, and I have emptied the temp directory. I render at detail 0.5 and AA 0.5. I have 4GB of RAM and a brandnew and fast dual core CPU.
Just yesterday I tried one at 4500 x 2200, which crashed all the time, even when cropping in six parts. I tried 4200, which crashed as well (right at the start, the runtime message). When I got to 3900 it worked flawless. And very fast as well, the six parts were done in an hour or so.
I am still to try decreasing the number of threads to 2 or 0, which possible solution I found yesterday.
There seems to be some 'magic' threshold above which TGD doesn't even bother to load all masks and objects, hence my idea to render in smaller uncropped images and stitch them together. 

Oshyan

Rendering an image at that size takes more image buffer space than anything most likely. Unfortunately using a crop render doesn't affect the size of those I don't think. Your best bet would be to either use the /3GB switch if you are on a 32 bit version of Windows, or better yet move to a 64 bit version of Windows. If you're already running 64 bit, then I think you may be out of luck until TG2 is converted to a fully 64 bit app.

- Oshyan

Dune

I am on a 32 bit version, but what do you mean by 'using the /3GB switch'? Can I implement this somewhere?

Oshyan


Dune

Thanks Oshyan, but Microsoft only speaks about Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition. I work on XP pro (SP2). Will it work there, that you know of?

Dune

I already found out it should work on XP pro, and due to try it out. Thanks again.

I read something else: Some manufacturers preconfigure their applications to use application memory tuning, making it unnecessary for you to make this change. For more information, see your application documentation and contact your application vendor to determine whether they support Large Address Awareness or whether you can enable it in their application.
Has this not been done in TG2?



neuspadrin

#8
Windows XP 32bit is limited to 4gb max memory (sometimes this can even be lower even if you have 4gb, sometimes it will report between 3-3.7 or so even if a full 4 is in, this is due to how other memory devices are loaded, such as graphics memory)

Now, windows basically tells each application you can have at a MAX 2 gb of memory to the application, selfishly giving itself the rest of your memory for itself. However, if you tell windows with a /3gb switch, windows gives applications a max of 3gb of memory to play with (even if you have 4 gb of ram, max you can use is 3 in a single application) and only keeps 1 gb to itself.  Now, a normal application still has the limit of 2gb of ram, unless it has been built with the specific instructions you mentioned of large memory address aware.  Only those programs built with the large memory address aware are allowed to use that extra 1gb of memory if and only if windows has a /3gb switch AND the program has been built to see this additional memory limit. 

To answer your question, yes terragen 2 has the large memory address aware, but it still is limited to 32bit limitations even in 64bit until they bring out a 64bit executable (which they have mentioned is a goal soon after release, can't wait :)) , and it still requires the user to change the /3gb switch first, and then applications have it enabled if they have been built to detect the change (which yes, terragen 2 can)

Dune

Well thanks a lot guys, especially Oshyan with the magic 3 letter combination! You made my day.  It was implemented in a second and now TG2 runs perfectly, even the largest renders without cropping. Ad far as I'm concerned this topic is closed, only I don't know how to do that (I have never actively done forums before).
Perhaps it is good to add this /3GB thing to the grand tutorial?

:) Dune

Oshyan

I'm glad that helped. :) We'll consider adding the /3GB switch to the documentation somewhere, perhaps in a tips or troubleshooting appendix.

- Oshyan