This one got complicated quickly....
Love the whitish cloud fractal! Nice terrain too! :)
The white fractal is not needed - you nailed the aurora even without it!
Good work with this... cloud? ;) Perhaps it is good to remove the fractal and make the aurora effect more pronounced.
Link for starfiled without nebula
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,4391.msg46100.html#msg46100
Removed the nebula fractals and changed AR, which required a few tweaks to the distant terrain.
Found the changes made very little difference to the render time (quite long at 5 hours) but still within comfortable limits...
I like the ridging in your slopes too. Well done!
Curious that this scene would take so long to render. It seems fairly simple. What is your hardware and basic render settings?
- Oshyan
i3470 with 16gb
Anything that improves quality erring on the side of high as opposed to low. I've found that rendering and re rendering test clips to shave time vs get quality i'm happy with can take more time than just balling a bit high and waiting it out.
I had to up the GI settings on these as there's some odd lighting work going on (2 suns, one really low and another that just lights the surfaces, and a very dim environment light). 2 layers of rock texture under the snow, of which there are 3 layers. I got some weird "black holes" after the snow but added a "compute normals" which pretty much fixed it (no idea why i felt to do that, odd memory from somewhere) 2 layers of cloud that isn't in the aurora, 3 layers in the aurora....
...there's a lot going on under the hood, half of it probably not needed...
...based around a 16KM 8K heightfield... (v3 eroded)
1920x1080 / Microply 0.6 - AA 0.5
I mimic Oshyan. That's an extremely excessive render time even after reviewing your system specs. Can I ask what were the samples in the main atm node? You stated you have 5 cloud layers. What were the samples on them set to? What were the optimizations on them? v2 or v3 clouds? Lastly did you have defer enabled?
5 cloud layers might explain a good portion of it, especially if they're v3, which doesn't provide much benefit in low density situations (vs v2) but still requires longer render times.
- Oshyan
Ok...
Amos Samples = 70
Cloud layer 1 (Global) = 0.243659
Cloud layer 2 (Cirrus 2D) = 0.510478
Cloud layer 3 (Aurora 1) = 1.23786
Cloud layer 4 (Aurora 2) = 1.26036
Cloud layer 5 (Aurora 3) = 1.03399
All optimizations = None
Clouds all v2
GI Padding = 0.5 (had some issues this seemed to "fix")
Without being funny, how well can a lot of you relate to my Paleocene level hardware. I have at times been told my renders are sometimes very long. But i'm told that by people with 4 x8core CPUs and 128GB of memory. I don't have that. Evidently I have an abacus....
Ok, was defer enabled ?
Yes, it was.
I forgot to put that. I had to type the reply twice as I errantly closed the tab after I'd written it the first time. Forgot to mention it on the retype..
Your cloud quality settings might be excessively high. I rarely go above 0.25 and have done loads at 0.1 lately.
Quote from: ajcgi on April 09, 2018, 10:30:52 AM
Your cloud quality settings might be excessively high. I rarely go above 0.25 and have done loads at 0.1 lately.
I find noise creeping in at anything below 0.5 for most "normal" cloud layers. Anything as low as 0.1 I found to look like halftoning... Not on this particular render but as i've mentioned I find sometimes the endless back/forward render tweaking takes longer and sucks all the fun out of it for me so i do tend to ball high sometimes.
QuoteNot on this particular render but as i've mentioned I find sometimes the endless back/forward render tweaking takes longer and sucks all the fun out of it for me so i do tend to ball high sometimes.
With you on this. As long as a scene renders comfortably overnight I'm happy. I do agree it's a good idea to tweak rendering settings to reduce the total time, though.
This is a cool scene. Small suggestion: The foreground is appropriately ghostly but seems too warm given the subject. Maybe a cooler blue or blue-green cast?
Quote from: Ethrieltd on April 09, 2018, 10:19:00 AM
Yes, it was.
I forgot to put that. I had to type the reply twice as I errantly closed the tab after I'd written it the first time. Forgot to mention it on the retype..
Thats the issue. If you have Defer enabled you can reduce the sample values almost in half since they are thin. Drop the atmo sample to 16-20 tops. Just doing that will cut your render times by est 2/3rds
I didn't see what your antialiasing (AA) setting is, but indeed you generally do not need such high atmo and cloud values with it enabled. I would also say your Micropoly Detail is probably a little more than needed for such a relatively simple terrain. 0.6 might do fine. Remember the Micropoly Detail will not affect clouds if Defer Atmo is on.
- Oshyan