Hey guys,
So I have been spending a lot of time figuring out how to render decent looking clouds in TG3. I accomplished somewhat decent ones here. Thought of sharing with you and getting some feedback.
Any tips on speeding up render times for clouds will be much much appreciated!
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5583/14191180712_a7cba709c9_o.jpg)
That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?
look nice,
need just more détails and resolution, and my be some lights and it will be perfect
i know it not easy to work with clouds.
its depend for a lot of settings and also have a good computer
wow darknight! They look great and very real ;)
Nicely done, what was the render time?
Photorealistic. Great job
David
beautiful sea of clouds
Nice Clouds! And nicely lit as well.
Thanks guys for all the encouragement!
Here is a 2 K larger version.
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2907/14036913358_db7996f000_o.jpg)
Quote from: cyphyr on May 16, 2014, 09:16:36 AM
Nicely done, what was the render time?
The render took 2 hours to render on a twin Xeon(hexacore) machine.
Quote from: Hannes on May 16, 2014, 04:41:24 AM
That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?
Thanks. I used 2 layers of Altocumulous clouds.
For the first one these are the settings
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2937/14223165774_46ede5be5f_b.jpg)
For the second one, I just made a copy of the first one and changed the density fractal values a little bit.
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2907/14243557383_de248ceaa7_o.jpg)
PS: Any clues to reduce render times will be deeply appreciated!
Pretty clouds, seems you're getting the hang of TG pretty quickly :)
For advice on render times we would like to know your render settings of course ;D
Generally it is quite simple:
Start with 24 atmosphere samples and set cloud quality to 0.5.
Is there grain in the clouds? -> increase cloud quality with ~0.1-0.2 increments.
Is there grain in the shadows of the atmosphere? -> increase atmosphere samples with increments of ~8-16.
Clouds cast shadows into the atmosphere, when these are noisy you thus need to increase atmosphere samples.
Also, when the shadows on your terrain are noisy (often in the distance) then you will need to increase atmosphere samples.
Render with render detail 0.6-0.85.
Anything >0.85 is very likely to render subpixel detail, which can give a slight sharper image, but from that setting and up the rendertimes become very long very quickly while you'll get very little to no improvement anymore.
For test renders I use anything from 0.3 to 0.7...depends on whether I would like to check rough look (0.3) or finer details (0.7).
AA is not very important here, so AA4-6 should suffice.
(for populations you will get nice results with AA6, good results with AA8 and best results with AA12, anything higher means longer rendering for little improvement)
At this stage of your TG experience please, please...please! don't bother with the Ray Traced Atmosphere (RTA) setting.
If you're keen on knowing more of this then use the search function and use my nickname as filter, then search for "ray traced atmosphere" or "adaptive sampling" to know more about some advanced render settings like RTA and adaptive AA sampling.
Also, be aware that the atmosphere/cloud render settings also affect the 3D preview rendering speed quite severely.
Cheers,
Martin
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 19, 2014, 02:44:00 PM
Pretty clouds, seems you're getting the hang of TG pretty quickly :)
For advice on render times we would like to know your render settings of course ;D
Generally it is quite simple:
Start with 24 atmosphere samples and set cloud quality to 0.5.
Is there grain in the clouds? -> increase cloud quality with ~0.1-0.2 increments.
Is there grain in the shadows of the atmosphere? -> increase atmosphere samples with increments of ~8-16.
Clouds cast shadows into the atmosphere, when these are noisy you thus need to increase atmosphere samples.
Also, when the shadows on your terrain are noisy (often in the distance) then you will need to increase atmosphere samples.
Render with render detail 0.6-0.85.
Anything >0.85 is very likely to render subpixel detail, which can give a slight sharper image, but from that setting and up the rendertimes become very long very quickly while you'll get very little to no improvement anymore.
For test renders I use anything from 0.3 to 0.7...depends on whether I would like to check rough look (0.3) or finer details (0.7).
AA is not very important here, so AA4-6 should suffice.
(for populations you will get nice results with AA6, good results with AA8 and best results with AA12, anything higher means longer rendering for little improvement)
At this stage of your TG experience please, please...please! don't bother with the Ray Traced Atmosphere (RTA) setting.
If you're keen on knowing more of this then use the search function and use my nickname as filter, then search for "ray traced atmosphere" or "adaptive sampling" to know more about some advanced render settings like RTA and adaptive AA sampling.
Also, be aware that the atmosphere/cloud render settings also affect the 3D preview rendering speed quite severely.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks a lot Martin! That is a very good start for me to understand things regarding rendering. I really appreciate your post!
WOW!
Thanks for your sharing, this cloud looks magnificent, but I'm unable to recreate this in Terragen 4 :(
Quote from: Darknight on May 19, 2014, 02:22:12 PM
Thanks guys for all the encouragement!
Here is a 2 K larger version.
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2907/14036913358_db7996f000_o.jpg)
Quote from: cyphyr on May 16, 2014, 09:16:36 AM
Nicely done, what was the render time?
The render took 2 hours to render on a twin Xeon(hexacore) machine.
Quote from: Hannes on May 16, 2014, 04:41:24 AM
That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?
Thanks. I used 2 layers of Altocumulous clouds.
For the first one these are the settings
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2937/14223165774_46ede5be5f_b.jpg)
For the second one, I just made a copy of the first one and changed the density fractal values a little bit.
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2907/14243557383_de248ceaa7_o.jpg)
PS: Any clues to reduce render times will be deeply appreciated!
I tried to render this with the beta and all I'm getting is a black screen. Anyone else care to try................ :o
Quote from: yossam on July 02, 2016, 11:59:37 AM
I tried to render this with the beta and all I'm getting is a black screen...
Did you waited until the end?
When i tried the scene with the same settings it took more then 6 minutes or so even just to see the GI working.
It might take only much longer to render then you think maybe.
A 100x56 image took 4:35 to render with very low cloud GI settings (Still/low) in the render settings (the image wasn't black).
I will just try another one with your highest GI cloud settings (Still/Very high).
Same 100x56 image took 16:51 to finish(Still/Very high). That is quite a difference.
Your original would take probably at least 16 hour or so to render. With my computer of course.
I used 7 threads for example...
I would take out one cloud layer if you can-want of course.
You were right...........I didn't wait long enough. I didn't see the first dot until 5 minutes into the render. The pic below is at .25 detail and 2AA. It took 13 minutes to render on a 16 core i7(8 physical). Is defer atmo on by default? Anyway, as the old saying goes,go big or go home. I'm gonna try a render at 2K and .6 detail and 6AA...........see you tomorrow some time. :)
:)
The same very high render at that small size with only one cloud was very fast by the way 01:51 .
Quote from: yossam on July 02, 2016, 01:26:19 PM
You were right...........I didn't wait long enough. I didn't see the first dot until 5 minutes into the render. The pic below is at .25 detail and 2AA. It took 13 minutes to render on a 16 core i7(8 physical). Is defer atmo on by default? Anyway, as the old saying goes,go big or go home. I'm gonna try a render at 2K and .6 detail and 6AA...........see you tomorrow some time. :)
Heh heh, no doubt. Although I've been noticing some speed ups when I have tried clouds I pay the price....it's like crack for terrain artists ....
Wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be................almost 5 hrs. :) Render was at .65 detail and 6 AA and GI was very high on the clouds. No post except conversion to 8 bit.
The voxels at 29 Million & defer checked set with quality is over 1 are whats bumping the render time. Thats excessive
That's why I asked if defer was supposed to be checked...............default was checked. All I did was create the cloud layers and rendered. ;)
Curious as to what would be the preferred voxel count?
Me 2..................... ???
We don't know what the ideal voxel count is. It is going to depend on the shape and density of your clouds, and other parts of the scene affect how long it takes to calculate lighting for the voxels too.
The default in the Beta is 30 million. Sometimes you can use smaller numbers without seeing any difference. But sometimes you need to use more, particularly with clouds that have a very high "cloud density".
Matt
For most still renders, Cloud GI quality of "Still / Very high" is overkill. Your renders will go much faster if you reduce this to "Still / Medium", and in many scenes you won't notice the difference.
Matt
Matt,
Is defer atmo supposed to be checked or not at default?
Alright, so voxel count is trial and error. Noted.
Yes, Defer Atmo is intended to be enabled by default now. This does mean that your renderer Antialiasing then affects cloud quality! The Quality slider in the cloud layer is a relative quality adjuster that operates with the number of AA samples to determine final cloud quality (noise level). If you need to use high AA, for example 6 or above, you might want to reduce cloud quality a bit to compensate (unless you find that the cloud still renders noisy). Just remember that AA4-6 or so is usually adequate for *cloud only* scenes with cloud quality 1 (with Defer enabled).
- Oshyan
Handy to know.
@Yossam Dang I never realized that this thread had come back to life! Nice looking clouds there!
TY :)