Render Error

arisdemos · March 21, 2009, 02:49:34 PM

"Also thats to be expected with 32bit, if you have 4 gigs of ram only part of it will show due to how the os loads ram. "

Solution: Open an elevated Command Prompt, type BCDEdit /set pae ForceEnable and press Enter. PAE=Physical Address Extension. This is supposed to open up 4 (or more) gigs in Vista 32, but I haven't actually tried it yet.

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 03:08:31 PM

I don't think 15 for aa and 1 for detail is to high.
I have used these settings for all my final renderings.
This is the only render that have caused these problems.

- Terje

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 03:10:05 PM

Quote from: arisdemos on March 21, 2009, 02:49:34 PM
"Also thats to be expected with 32bit, if you have 4 gigs of ram only part of it will show due to how the os loads ram. "

Solution: Open an elevated Command Prompt, type BCDEdit /set pae ForceEnable and press Enter. PAE=Physical Address Extension. This is supposed to open up 4 (or more) gigs in Vista 32, but I haven't actually tried it yet.

I don't use Vista.

- Terje

neuspadrin · March 21, 2009, 04:23:56 PM

PAE won't help any in most user desktop situations, as it's usually gets limited by the hardware/bios and not the os. Both the hardware and the OS need to support pae for it to work.

In fact, most versions of windows run PAE mode automatically due to DEP by default being on, which requires PAE. Assuming windows xp sp2 or later. But then there still is a chance pae wont fully be enabled sometimes unless you define the switch... so its worth a try, but wont guarantee results.

Also, /pae is ok with xp too, not just vista.

Mohawk20 · March 21, 2009, 04:56:54 PM

About those AA settings again...
Have you noticed any difference between a render with AA at 8 and AA at 15?
As far as I know the difference is minimal, while the render time increases drastically...

neuspadrin · March 21, 2009, 04:58:57 PM

Thats also what I was thinking, AA 15 just seems... excessively over needed quality. 6+ usually is very good for a final render.

arisdemos · March 21, 2009, 05:12:44 PM

Thanks Neuspadrin for the further info on PAE limitations and considerations.

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 05:46:34 PM

I have rendered images with AA 15 before and I still think I could have used more.
Of course this also depend on the image it self.

- Terje

kaisersuzuki · March 21, 2009, 06:13:06 PM

I had this problem before. I couldnt get a straight answer. I think the answer is dont attempt to use really high quality or really high resolution settings even though it appears as though you can. Terragen cannot actually handle it.

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 06:24:04 PM

But I want to render it big and with high quality

- Terje

jo · March 21, 2009, 07:45:13 PM

Hi Terje,

I'd try dropping the AA setting. Have you compared a setting of 8 to your setting of 15 to see what the difference is? With an image which renders of course.

I've rendered a few problematic scenes for people and it often turns out they've gone overboard on certain settings. In a several cases the higher settings would render on OS X but would be taking forever. When I dropped the settings the render completed without problems, was much faster and when the results were compared the images were a bit different but you wouldn't say the lower settings were appreciably lower quality. Of course there is a point where the quality would start to diminish, but if you just go right for the highest setting you are asking for trouble a bit.

When you're using 32 bit XP without the /3GB switch turned on you are basically using TG2 in the most resource constrained situation you can run it in. You only have 2 GB of memory available to the application. Unfortunately by the time you've added a few populations and cranked the settings up it's not hard to blow through the 2 GB limit. It is a bit of a balancing act to get certain scenes to render in that case.

Regards,

Jo

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 07:52:51 PM

Hi jo

Ok.... I give up. I will try reducing the AA and see what happens.
I'll post the result if it finish.

- Terje

neuspadrin · March 21, 2009, 08:01:45 PM

Quote from: jo on March 21, 2009, 07:45:13 PM
When you're using 32 bit XP without the /3GB switch turned on you are basically using TG2 in the most resource constrained situation you can run it in.

Unless you are running with 512mb ram or something

That's a little resource constrained

But yeh, some of the qualities you can set don't matter too much after certain values, except addition to render times. Generally AA stops becoming as useful around ~8, detail at .9 and 1 are very close, etc etc. Sometimes a few compromises are needed.

sjefen · March 21, 2009, 08:40:15 PM

Just wanted to say that when I reduced the subdiv cache from 400 to 200 and turned Preallocate subdiv cache on, the render has made it a little bit longer

It seams a little slower, but maybe it will finish this time.

- Terje

Oshyan · March 21, 2009, 08:52:19 PM

Another thing to consider is that use of different AA filters can have a much more dramatic effect on the final scene quality in terms of edge sharpness and blending than the difference between for example AA of 8 and 15. It is a somewhat different effect depending on the AA filter, of course, but I find use of the right AA filter to be more critical for the best resulting scene quality than really high levels of AA. There are exceptions, like vegetation-heavy scenes with lots of fine, sharp objects (grasses or conifers), but for the most part that holds true.

- Oshyan