I need to know the best settings to render this terrain at 4961 x 3508pixels at highest quality and speed. For those that cant be bothered to download the file here an small version:
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/345/12341234t.png
Computer Info:
Windows 7, 64bit
Intel i7 870 (Quad core, 2.93GHz, 8 threads)
4 Gigs DDR3 Ram
The main things I need to know are:
Minimum/Maximum Threads
"Size of subdiv cache in mb"
Preallocate subdiv cache?
Anti aliasing bloom?
Do ray traced shadows?
Pixel filter
All the quality setting for the atmosphere
Basically i just need to know everything that will bring down render time but still leave it high quality, as there are no clouds, no close ground features there must be some setting i can turn down and still have it look good.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
:)
welcome to the forum , and nice pic also, a quick search of the forums will probably throw up some useful info for you, there are lots of useful discussions regarding most of what you have asked...
:)
I downloaded and had a look. I reset the render node settings to defaults, that's min' 1/max' 16 threads(depends on how many processor cores you have, each processor uses 1 'thread', it can never exceed your maximum processors while rendering, even when you set 'max' to much higher than the number of processors you have, which I see is 8 ). And I reset the subdiv' cache to 400mb (default).
AA Bloom: A good setting to check in almost any render, and especially here in this one. It takes away the over-sharpness of bright highlights by 'blooming'(kind of like blurring) them at AA time. Without this setting checked, highlights on water, for example, will look very sharp and unrealistic. Keep it checked, I'd say.
Preallocate subdivision cache: As I understand it, this will apply the given amount of RAM to each and every render tile(bucket) you have running. If you have this set too high for the amount of RAM installed on your computer then TG will tell you it was unable to allocate that memory and that render bucket will fail. As an example, in your file you have a subdiv' cache of 900mb but 8 maximum threads, if you only have 1gb RAM installed on your machine(which I can see you don't) then nearly all of that RAM is being preallocated to one single thread, leaving none for the other 7 threads(and the rest of your computer, too) to use.
Someone else might explain this better/more correctly, it's a setting I never need to use. I'd uncheck it for this scene, it shouldn't need that much RAM per bucket as you have no extra 'heavy' objects requiring lots of RAM.
Do ray traced shadows: Leave this setting checked in the renderer node. It will calculate correct shadows from terrains and other scene elements.
Pixel filter: This is pretty much down to your own taste. For sharp images, use 'Box', for soft use 'Cubic B-Spline'. In this scene an AA level of 3(default) should be fine. You have no real need to go higher. In fact, you might even go lower by adjusting the 'pixel sampler' to use AA=3, 1/16 samples. Here are some examples that Oshyan from Planetside posted some time ago; http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5142.msg53401#msg53401
Atmosphere: I dropped the atmo' samples from your setting of 64 to 32 and I've rendered the top half of your image so far in under 30 minutes on my 2 threads. There is no 'noise' in the atmosphere.
What I would say that is adding lots of unnecessary render time to this scene is the GI settings. I would completely disable GI(set relative detail and sample quality both to '0'), the scene is completely backlit and you have no features in the shadows that require GI to brighten them up. GI is unneeded and will add an extremely long time to the rendering, for no real effect.
A render detail of '1' is unnecessary as well, especially at this size, unless you need a pixel-perfect render for production purposes. A level of '0.5' should be fine for this scene. I've set it to '0.6'. You'll rarely need to go higher than '0.8' for really excellent results. See these posts for detailed explanations on render/AA/Ray tracing settings; http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8300.0
I am rendering the scene just now, I don't know if I'll have time to finish rendering the water part. I'll post a link to however much I can complete and you could probably get away with crop-rendering the water portion and joining the two parts in an image editor program. All the settings are pretty much halved from the ones you uploaded and it is still very good quality and fast. Just don't assume that cranking levels will give the best results, lots of times you'll see no visible differences between settings but the render times will be significantly different. It's a balancing act, rendering with TG. :)
Wow, yeah thanks man. This render was taking me over 7 hours before, with the setting you recommended its been 6 minutes and most of the sky is done, it will obviously take allot longer to do the water and i will probably turn the quality up a tad.
Turning the atmosphere quality down does allot i remember, i'm just used to having it really high to render clouds.
Is ray traced shadows really necessary for this?
Ah, well. If you have the sky rendered already, you won't require my one then.
The main culprit in your long render was the GI, as you can see, it's really added nothing but time to the image.
There is maybe a few more optimizations you could still do. Set transparency to '0' in the water shader, for instance. You won't see through any of this water so that is wasted calculated render time as well, transparency takes a long time to render, even when it can't be seen.
You could render the water portion at about 0.75 detail and it'll look great, hardly any different from '1'.
Another thing(that you might already know but since you mention cloud/atmo samples) on atmosphere/cloud quality settings that was posted by a PS staff member that is good advice is, if there is noise in the brightly lit areas of clouds, raise cloud samples, if the noise appears in shadowed areas of cloud then, raise atmosphere samples. Have a good dig through the sticky topics here in the forum, they're pinned there for a good reason! ;)
As for 'do ray traced shadows', no, it isn't visually necessary at all in this scene. It will render very much quicker still without it. :)
*** Edited for a better explanation: When 'do ray traced shadows' is checked in the renderer node, parts of the scene that would cast a shadow across anything else, will cast the shadow. When it is unchecked, there will be no 'cast' shadows but areas that aren't in direct light will still appear to be in shade. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Render on!
Yeah, I read somewhere that GI is just good for extreme close ups.
Ok thanks, i just keep turning all cloud and atmosphere settings up as much as possible cause otherwise my clouds look absolutely awful XD
so what does ray traced shadows actually achieve then, atmospheric shadows? or just higher quality shadows?
thanks for all the help, you saved me coming home after going or waking up, coming to my computer, and seeing "7 hours hours rendered" and still unfinished
No, GI isn't just for close-ups. Have a look at my TG2 pages here >> https://sites.google.com/site/d4nd310
In the navigation bar at the left you'll find my 'Terragen 2 GI examples page', among lots and lots more stuff you'll hopefully appreciate. :)
The renderer node's ray traced shadows checkbox does pretty much what I said in my edit up there. ^^
Unchecking it will stop scene elements 'casting' shadows form one surface to the next.
Imagine a mountain with the sun behind and slightly off to the right side of it. Its shadow will be visible on anything to the front-left of the mountain, as far as it extends according to the sun's height. Unchecking the 'do ray traced shadows' box removes these shadows completely. All that will be left is the effect of the sunlight on the surface, if it's in the direct path of the sun rays. So, surfaces facing the sun will be lit/surfaces away from the sun will be in shade. Simply, there are just no secondary shadows 'cast' from surface to surface.
Maybe I am not explaining correctly. Illustrating it with an example is always a better way.
'Do ray traced shadows' = Checked:
[attachimg=#]
A visible shadow, and shade. A shadow is cast across the ground from the mountain.
'Do ray traced shadows' = Unchecked:
[attachimg=#]
Only light and shade, no extra shadows 'cast' across the ground.
That's a better description than I could type, I think. ;)
ahhh i see, i understand now, thanks :)
You may be confusing the Renderer Node "do raytraced shadows" option with the "raytrace shadows" options in the cloud and atmosphere quality tabs. "Do raytraced shadows" in the Renderer Node should usually be turned on and, though it does increase render time, it is a fairly critical part of realism in most scenes. The raytrace settings in cloud and atmosphere node quality settings on the other hand should usually be left *off* as they are only applicable in very specific circumstances, where terrain would be casting a shadow either into clouds or into the atmosphere, respectively. One situation you may run into where you need Raytraced Shadows in the atmosphere is when the sun is visible behind a piece of terrain, in which case enabling raytracing in the atmosphere node will resolve the problem.
Other than that the advice above is fairly good and your render times should be just fine now (although keep in mind you're rendering at extremely high resolution, so it *is* going to take a while).
- Oshyan