Where's Pacman when you need him?

[kevnar]

Can someone give me a run-down on the actual rendering process TG2 goes through? I'm wondering what's the deal with all the dots. Why not just render the scene like TG0.9? I'm sure there's a reason for them. Just wondering what it is. 

[neuspadrin]

dots are part of the supersample/gi prepass and such, then renders the image full on.

The prepass is to make lighting more realistic, as it calculates the entires scene then renders it.

the number of dots increases with the detail slider, and GI relative detail slider, and GI sample quality increases the quality of the sample.

just incase you have a ton of excess dots and are wondering why a simple render is taking too long, heres some good values:

decent quality "quick" render
detail: .5-.6
GI detail: 2
GI sample: 2

final
detail: .8-1
GI detail: 2-3
GI sample: 2-3

theres always exceptions to whats around, but those are just good rule of thumbs i tend to stick to.

[kevnar]

That makes sense. I was just wondering why it drew all the dots and then seemed to erase over them anyway before it renders the final scene. I figured they were some sort of place holders for the final render.

[kevnar]

I adjusted the GI detail and sample from 2 to 3 and seem to have doubled the render time. The exact same scene is going on 15 1/2 hours now, and it's still not done 5/6 of the dots. Wow. 

[neuspadrin]

What sort of system are you running it on? also what resolution and other settings you have set?

[kevnar]

I also reduced the detail from 1 to 0.8. I thought that would speed it up by 25%.

I'm running it on a machine a couple years old. This thing probably needs more ram, but I'm just gonna buy a whole new machine.

[Mohawk20]

You don't need GI at 3...

I always do 1 for test renders and 2 for final. The render time would be killing otherwise.

[PG]

And remember that you can set detail and sample separately.

[kevnar]

Should I use the super sample prepass and GI surface details? How much difference do they make in quality and rendering time?

[Oshyan]

Supersample Prepass is a good option that will tend to make GI more accurate and consistent, and does not add too much to render time. GI Surface Details is much more render intensive and has a noticeable positive effect on a much smaller range of scene types. You need to be close-up to the terrain and have fine surface details for it to really matter. I would leave it off in the majority of situations.

- Oshyan

[kevnar]

Thanks. I just read the description in another thread as well. Got it a bit clearer now.

Now all my scene needs is a tutorial on how to break up the shore of a lake into waves instead of a straight line across the sand. I've seen it done in sample photos. I wonder if someone can point me to a tutorial.

Thanks in advance.

[kevnar]

Okay I have another question about the render process.

It seems to make an entire pass over one section of the land, drawing water reflections for parts of the lake that are gonna be under the terrain anyway. The very next pass, the terrain is drawn right over top of it. The underground lake took about 45 minutes to render, and the above ground terrain was done in about 5. Why does it do this? I think a lot of time could be saved by not drawing things that aren't seen anyway. Call it backlake culling.

Just my thoughts.

[rcallicotte]

If you do some searches, you'll find this topic in scads.

[edit]...but it's listed under 'culling', if you do search for it[/edit]

Call it backlake culling.

Just my thoughts.

[Hetzen]

I've not tried this, it's something I thought about when experiencing the same thing. I wonder if painting in the water area with the paintshader then attach that to the water shader's blend input would cut out unnecesary reflection calculations. Will give it a go at the end of a current render.

[Hetzen]

Well, just tried it and it works. Except that you have to attach the water shader to the child input of a surface shader, with the paint shader attached to it's blend input, before it reaches the lake object. Which is now bloody usefull to know for a scene I've been working on.