New "ray detail region" setting?

[Seth]

Two new render settings on the Advanced tab which control the region in which ray traced polygons are fully subdivided. Outside of this region the ray traced polygons are only coarsely subdivided. Previously this region was the frustum seen by the rendered image or crop region, but now you can also choose to have no detail or to have detail everywhere within the camera frustum regardless of crop settings. "Ray detail region padding" can be used to enlarge (or shrink) the region. A value of 0 means no padding. A value of 1 adds a border to each side of the frustum which is equivalent to the width or height of the image or crop region, which makes the frustum 3 times as wide and 3 times as tall.

wish to speak english better so i could understand something out of this explaination... 

[rcallicotte]

I understand English and I barely get it.  It seems like it should be easier to understand than this, but then I remember that Planetside is in England and they speak real English...so, maybe we'll get lucky and someone will throw some slang our way.

Two new render settings on the Advanced tab which control the region in which ray traced polygons are fully subdivided. Outside of this region the ray traced polygons are only coarsely subdivided. Previously this region was the frustum seen by the rendered image or crop region, but now you can also choose to have no detail or to have detail everywhere within the camera frustum regardless of crop settings. "Ray detail region padding" can be used to enlarge (or shrink) the region. A value of 0 means no padding. A value of 1 adds a border to each side of the frustum which is equivalent to the width or height of the image or crop region, which makes the frustum 3 times as wide and 3 times as tall.

wish to speak english better so i could understand something out of this explaination... 

[RArcher]

Essentially this now allows you to set how detailed the calculations are outside of your crop or image area.  This helps for problems in animating where shadows cast from things outside the image area were not being calculated as accurately as shadows cast by objects inside the viewing area.  I believe this is the solution for Richard's problem with his animation here:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5417.0

This is my understanding anyway.

[neuspadrin]

heres quick render comparisons:

first: normal render, no crop
second: render cropped halfway, with detail in crop only (the usual way it used to work)
third: render with detail set for camera while cropped halfway like before.

[Tangled-Universe]

Good example Neuspadrin.

I believe this function also allows for more accurate reflection of water if things outside the frustum are being reflected in that water.

[rcallicotte]

There's no difference between the first and the third render (above), is there?  If not, why use it?

[neuspadrin]

There's no difference between the first and the third render (above), is there?  If not, why use it?

thats the whole point.  the third render was cropped, the first was not.

so people who want a nice huge render but their computer cant handle it, or they want to slowly build it and have stopping points, they can crop the image into areas while using the detail from camera instead of crop such that the shadows match up.

the left side is one crop, the right side is the other crop, look at the bottom line that goes red to green to see when the crop happens.  if you notice in the second one, following that line is where shadows distort and act funny and doesn't add up together as nice + shadows on the right look funny and non realistic.

[rcallicotte]

Thanks for explaining, but the second one makes sense.  I still don't get the use of the first vs. third.

[neuspadrin]

the first one is the image as rendered without a crop just to show what it for sure should look like and get a comparison.  the second was to show how the previous versions were forced to always render (where the shadows wouldn't match up if you cropped), and the third is to show how now with the feature enabled, it looks just like the original again doing the same crops.

it was just a couple renders to show some comparison so people could see what the feature did.

[rcallicotte]

Thanks again.

So...(I'm tired, but not really so dense), if someone uses crop - WHY would they use crop?  That is my real question.  Does using the crop setting somehow cut render times?

[neuspadrin]

well its a matter of then they can crop it and do it in groups.  like dom. He only had access to a computer for rendering for a short while, and tried cropping his large image to then piece together, but he couldn't due to the shadows n such not matching across.

[rcallicotte]

Ahhh.  I see.  I thought for some reason this was being used for animation in some way.

Thanks for explaining, neuspadrin.

[Mohawk20]

I had this issue once where I was rendering, and wanted to check a setting in the main window. I then got a runtime error and managed to make a screen shot before the program shut down. I could finish the render by doing crops so I didn't have to render the whole thing again.

Another time I had a lot of large populations, and I didn't have enough RAM for the whole image, bit I did manage to render in 3 parts, cropped.

So that's why someone would use Crop...

[neuspadrin]

I believe it also helps animation to stop shadow popping using padding and such i believe.

[rcallicotte]

This makes sense.

I believe it also helps animation to stop shadow popping using padding and such i believe.