Wild Garlic and Bluebells

[cyphyr]

Well here it is, my continuation of the Ground Cover Mashup and Walk in the Woods renders.

Wild Garlic and Bluebells

Vital stasts:
13 populations ranging from approx 50 to 1.5mil
750x1000
3h49m
0.9 ~ 10 ~ 2 ~ 2 ~ 4
SubDiv Cache ~ 600Mb
2 x enviro lights (AO & GI)

I'm quite happy with this one but I would like to push it further, more variety, more detail ... but I had to trim back to the above settings to avoid raytrace errors and it would of course be nice with light rays streaming through the trees but life really is too short for that kind of wait lol
Anyway Comments and Crits welcome as always.

Thanks for looking

richard

[rcallicotte]

Wow.  The more I look at this, the more I like it.  At first, it seemed too hazy or not sharp enough.  But, as I looked it over a few times, it began to pop out.

[darthvader]

I love the detail in the forground, but as I look back into the image the realism fades away somewhat...I think it's the trees. However, excellent work on the groundcover!

[Zylot]

Yeah, the foreground is absolute gold, a photograph.  The trees, however, are offputting...  I think it's the branches..

[trekker317]

  Awesome work !

[MacGyver]

Fantastic! How long did you say was it rendering?

[Oshyan]

Very nice indeed. What was the reason you used a cache size of 600MB?

- Oshyan

[Naoo]

Hi

Realy wonderful!

Only the trees are al little bit 'zackig' (zig zag sorry I don't know the english word).


ciao
Naoo

[cyphyr]

Thanks for the feedback guys, yeah I agree about the trees, kinda a filler that I never got around to fixing, maybe I'll concentrate on that later.
Render time was only 3.59 hours, not too bad for such a complex scene.
I set the subdiv cache to a size of 600MB as part of trying to fix some traceRay? rayTrace? errors that resulted in skipped and unfinished buckets, I also dropped the detail and AA from max and put some of the plants on "High Quality" rather than "Very High Quality" so any of the above could have fixed the render problem.

richard

[Oshyan]

Generally speaking *lowering* the cache size is what will help as those kinds of errors usually indicate memory limitations. Increasing cache size uses *more* memory and can actually create problems. Until TG2 goes 64 bit (and you're using it on a 64 bit OS) I don't recommend changing cache sizes.

- Oshyan

[cyphyr]

OK I did wonder if I should have lowered the cache but my reasoning was that with 400mb cache and 4 cores I'd be using 1600 mb of memory so with 13 populations and their associated image maps I figured it would be wise to take advantage of the extra 1400mb of unused ram (I have 8 gig but I'm assuming TG2 will only use up to 3.2gig (ish). Not wanting to push the issue I "split the difference" and settled for the middle ground. 600Mb cache on 4 cores giving a total 2400mb cache.
Obviously I have misunderstood the whole cache issue.

richard

[Oshyan]

Yes, actually the cache is *split* amongst all the cores. You are specifying the *total* size of the cache. So with 4 cores at 400MB, it's 100MB per core/thread. Unless you're running on OSX, a 64 bit version of Windows, or have the /3GB switch turned on in 32 bit Windows, TG2 can only use 2GB of RAM max (like every other 32 bit app). With the /3GB switch it can use up to 3GB. With 64 bit it can use up to 4GB. But still the philosophy that you "might as well increase the cache to make use of the 'unused' memory" doesn't actually result in any measurable benefit, and generally increases the likelihood of memory-related issues. You can't always know how much memory your scene will use. So the default is strongly recommended, and changing it is only usually desirable in troubleshooting cases.

- Oshyan

[cyphyr]

Cheers, oh I just remembered the other reason, when I initially dropped the cache to 200MB I got a warning that the cache may be too low and may result in performance issues (something like that), I tried it at 2500mb, 300mb and 350mb and still got the same error message, so then I figured the logic (illogical!) above
richard

[domdib]

Agree re the foreground - superb; and also that the realism fades a little in the background.

[Oshyan]

Yes, the warning kicks in when you have less than 100MB per core. Since you have 4 cores, anything less than the default will trigger the warning. However the warning is based on assumed potential issues of performance with low cache sizes, it is not a particularly serious warning state, generally speaking. Of course you should try to avoid small cache sizes as well, when possible, and the default of 400MB is fine on a quad core system.

- Oshyan