Hey guyz im stopping my actual thread with tutorials. I wont update in anymore, i wont this forums anymore untill final TG2 is released. The technology preview is too slow and too buggy and its anoying to work with it, however i will return when the TG2 is released. If anyone want to keep my thread going i will be GLAD to share my account with him so he can update the thread.
You and me both! I work on a scene for hrs. and hrs. Save it, come back later to render and get this:
[attachimg=#]
I'll try later if and when the supposed update for bug fixes comes out?
As I write my own software, I am used to bugs and methods of working around them, so I don't mind T2TP wasting my time. I am sorry to hear that you are leaving buchvecny - all we can hope is that the proper release of TG2 comes as quickly as possible...
Yeah, this is all part of it. The release is something everyone wants.
Once it's released, I'm betting the price will skyrocket. That's why it's fun for me now. Inexpensive, get time with the developers and main testers, and we're getting to understand a lot of the nuances that likely many won't who start fresh when TG2 starts. If I'm mistaken, I'll be happily corrected, but I'm willing to suffer a little to get the joy of understanding this program. Just a different way to look at it.
I stopped using the TP about a month ago....not necessarily because of bugs but just because it's too slow. The bugs haven't been overly annoying...to me the slow render times were.
I hope that the update will resolve both the bug issues and offer some optimization....I will wait and see.
In fairness to Planetside.....the TP is a free product, it's capabilities are far superior to 0.9xx and I am sure that bug issues will be addressed in due course.
In the meantime, I still frequent this forum to monitor progress.
I completely agree with Calico and Dark Fire. This is free and does loads of great things.
It may have a few wobbles now and then, but I for one am glad I get to play with it rather than sitting waiting for the final release to come out.
Plus if you think this is slow you should have tried TG back in 98 on a P1!!
Now that was slow, and I was rendering 320 X 240.
@duff.....
I was running version 0.642 ( if I recall correctly)...on a Dell pentium 90 with 64mb of Ram at one time.
(Actually, I still have that machine...I'll have to start it up again to see...LOL!)
I never had render times even close to the 70 hours experienced with TG2....yes, TG2 is much more feature packed and realistic since those early days......but that comes with a price in the form of long render times....
I'm sorry to hear you guys are leaving - Planetside is intending to release a bug fix update soon, so I hope that those of you with stability issues will at least give it another chance when it comes out.
gradient.
Yeah I was meaning given the results it seemed to take hours. The quality we are seeing with TG2 (for some of the more talented anyway ;) ) is way beyond the simplistic but never the less impressive TG 0.XXX. The possiblities are all almost endeless and as you rightly point out long render times are the result, but then if you are pushing what is possible that is to be expected. There should be a saying something like "They didn't render Toy Story in a day...."
Having said that there are specific shaders in TG2 that up the render times and I am generally sticking clear of them at the moment (reflective, water, etc...) so generally see render times in the 10 - 20 hour range for a 1024 X 768 render at about .7 quality. Not much different from my inital TG renders at afor mentioned resolution.
*** You had 64 MB !! You lucky man.
Quote from: joshbakr on March 04, 2007, 02:11:31 PM
You and me both! I work on a scene for hrs. and hrs. Save it, come back later to render and get this:
[attachimg=#]
I'll try later if and when the supposed update for bug fixes comes out?
That's an xml bug - remove any non-ascii-character from the file specified in the error message and it'll work again.
It should be easy to find, since the message even tells you the line where the error occured. Note that the same non-xml-valid name may appear multiple times in the file.
I can see how the bugs can bother you. But the render times....i don't know. Of course Tg .9 is going to render much faster. Its like playing a quake 3 in a modern computer. Its going to run smoothly even if you have a built in video card.
Tg 2 is a new software and its going to use all your computer power. Also, if someone expect tg .9 render times with GI, sub pixel displacements, volumetric clouds, reflective shaders i dont wanna know what they expect when sss is implemented, or refractions, or other things that use a lot of computer power....
Hi,
Quote from: joshbakr on March 04, 2007, 02:11:31 PM
You and me both! I work on a scene for hrs. and hrs. Save it, come back later to render and get this:
[attachimg=#]
I'll try later if and when the supposed update for bug fixes comes out?
Can you email me the file at :
jomeder@planetside.co.uk
There is probably quite a simple error in the XML of the file (I'm guessing not in the XML, but possibly an invalid character was saved in it somehow), so if I have a look I should be able to fix it and it will be interesting to see what the problem is.
Regards,
Jo
@duff...yeah...I was proud of those 64mb back then...LOL!!! Staying away from water?....what no guts...or just no time?
@fmtoffolo....hate to keep beating a dead horse here...of course TG2TP renders will take more time because of its advanced features. The question is...at what point does the quality of the end result render justify the increased render wait time?
Do you feel it's reasonable to wait 70hrs for an 800X600 TG2TP render? Are you getting that much better an end result than what you could have gotten out of a 2hr 800X600 TG 0.9XX render?
Is the extra wait worth it to you?....if your answer is yes, then TG2TP is for you.
That's really the decision everyone has to make for themselves.....
Quote from: gradient on March 04, 2007, 09:46:24 PM
The question is...at what point does the quality of the end result render justify the increased render wait time?
Do you feel it's reasonable to wait 70hrs for an 800X600 TG2TP render? Are you getting that much better an end result than what you could have gotten out of a 2hr 800X600 TG 0.9XX render?
Is the extra wait worth it to you?....if your answer is yes, then TG2TP is for you.
That's really the decision everyone has to make for themselves.....
I say YES! To be using software as amazing as TG2 at this stage in development is an extreme privilage - I am immensely grateful to Planetside for letting us experiment with the software and even suggest features and report bugs. In a way, all of the early users are each having a small effect on the quality of the final TG2, although credit has to go to the Planetside team for actually fixing the bugs we find and implementing the features we request...
well so does anyone want to take over my resource thread or not?
to be precise its not only the bugs... the slow render times too its insane i know the full version will be more or less similar (20% speed up or somewhat) but by the time the main version will be released, i will have my dual core (: so its all cool
yea and then i didnt say TG 2 preview is bad. But its a preview (:
Quote from: gradient on March 04, 2007, 09:46:24 PM
@duff...yeah...I was proud of those 64mb back then...LOL!!! Staying away from water?....what no guts...or just no time?
@fmtoffolo....hate to keep beating a dead horse here...of course TG2TP renders will take more time because of its advanced features. The question is...at what point does the quality of the end result render justify the increased render wait time?
Do you feel it's reasonable to wait 70hrs for an 800X600 TG2TP render? Are you getting that much better an end result than what you could have gotten out of a 2hr 800X600 TG 0.9XX render?
Is the extra wait worth it to you?....if your answer is yes, then TG2TP is for you.
That's really the decision everyone has to make for themselves.....
I encountered a 70 hour render once and I canceled the thing; of course its not reasonable ...but high render times are the result of people trying to ram into a scene several hundred thousand populations, complicated displacements, and to top everything out one or two volumetric layers and then render at .8 .9 or even 1 quality settings; slip that into any of the best render engines available (if it was possible) and it will choke.
I have rendered several pieces ranging from 2000 pix to 3000 pix at no more than .45 .47 quality and the results are great besides never going over 20 hours of render time.
Edlo, I'm glad to hear you've had success rendering at fairly high resolutions. Although I don't think your results are necessarily representative, and some people do prefer the quality increase of say 0.75 detail or even 1.0, I do certainly agree that many people are attempting very challenging scenes or simply cranking up detail settings without knowing really what their affect may be. It's easy to understand how one might get frustrated in these cases. Due to TG2's much more complex system it is a necessity that there be more detail adjustments, but this comes with an increased need for understanding of those settings as well. It's regretable that there is no good Renderer settings reference at this time (it is forthcoming), but I think it's fair to say that the defaults are a very good starting point and one should not simply crank all settings up and assume you'll get the best results. This was true with TG 0.9 as well, but is even more so with TG2.
With careful and judicious use of appropriate detail settings I think you can already get reasonable (although not outstanding) render times on even moderately complex scenes. Highly complex scenes and "outstanding" render times will have to wait for the significant optimization due later this year.
- Oshyan
Quote from: gradient on March 04, 2007, 09:46:24 PMIs the extra wait worth it to you?....if your answer is yes, then TG2TP is for you.
That's really the decision everyone has to make for themselves.....
I think that pretty much sums it up.
I render scenes at quality 1 too and put thing into the scene without caring much for render times. (which doesn't mean i use GI of 3 or 4, or some insane numer of samples) But I know it's worth it. And if it isn't, then I didn't make enough preview renders before to check the details are all ok.
Extensive use of the Crop Render function can help a lot in fine-tuning detail settings. Knowing what parts of the scene are likely to be a detail concern, and potentially rendering them separately at higher detail and compositing later, can also help. For example you might find in a scene with heavy rays that 64 atmosphere samples gives you good quality for 90% of the sky, but the small area around the sun is still noisy. Turning up to 128 or even 256 samples will solve it, but doing this for the whole sky is unnecessary and wasteful. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to do selective detail/sample maps as well...
- Oshyan
I never even thought about using Crop Renders to save for later to add into the whole finished picture. Sheeeeit.
Hmm well I go away (well play neverwinter nights 2) for two days and look what going on. I agree the it is buggy so far and the render times are realy really long but that the fun part for me, the sence of adventure and being on the bleeding egde of a new program (or at least as bleeding as I can be without be an alpha tester) but I'm glad to see you'll give it anouther chance when the final release comes thoguh.
Regards,
Will
@edlo....you said "but high render times are the result of people trying to ram into a scene several hundred thousand populations, complicated displacements, and to top everything out one or two volumetric layers and then render at .8 .9 or even 1 quality settings"
Absolutely not true in my case....take a look at my thread on water render times ( with link to final image)....NO objects, NO clouds....mostly water....yes quality at 1, GI @ 1.....
The subject of render times has been beaten to death...so, as I said before...if you're happy with it, then fine.
Anyway, glad you are having success with quality settings of 0.45....I suspect most folks would not be happy with that level of quality...
Water is particularly problematic right now in terms of render time. Certainly if you have a scene largely composed of water you're going to see very high render times. But then the same was true of TG 0.9, and I can remember more than few renders turning out to be 30+ hour monsters on 0.9 even with decent computer hardware. Fortunately you can take comfort in the fact that reflection and general water rendering time will come down. How much remains to be seen of course. But just because water rendering takes a long time right now doesn't mean overall rendering time is unusably slow.
- Oshyan
" I can remember more than few renders turning out to be 30+ hour monsters on 0.9 even with decent computer hardware."
Yeah...but not for an 800X600 render.....
And, yes I know you can't compare 800x600 renders across the two versions....
I'll keep quiet now....sorry for taking this thread sideways....
It only used to take me about 30 minutes per frame for top-quality HD resolution renders featuring a lot of water in TG 0.9...
30 mins for a top quality render! Well that shows how lousy I am, my longest render took....
QuoteOriginal render 5600x4180 @ 236 hrs:15mins
Oh! 0.9.43 WM1.25 Can't understand why so many pls moaning. ;D Mind you not feasible commercially speaking.
(http://www.terranuts.com/photopost/data/628/medium/Fanfayre_III_Revisited.jpg)
Quote from: gradient on March 05, 2007, 09:52:41 PM
@edlo....you said "but high render times are the result of people trying to ram into a scene several hundred thousand populations, complicated displacements, and to top everything out one or two volumetric layers and then render at .8 .9 or even 1 quality settings"
Absolutely not true in my case....take a look at my thread on water render times ( with link to final image)....NO objects, NO clouds....mostly water....yes quality at 1, GI @ 1.....
The subject of render times has been beaten to death...so, as I said before...if you're happy with it, then fine.
Anyway, glad you are having success with quality settings of 0.45....I suspect most folks would not be happy with that level of quality...
Of course I am happy with .45 settings and if you continue to set 1 quality and 1 GI you will continue to get insanely high render times; and yes water its quite slow at the moment but here http://ic3.deviantart.com/fs15/f/2007/024/8/6/promontorium_by_edlo.jpg there is a lot of water there, some volumetric clouds and quite a huge pine tree population; took 15 hours to render at .43 quality, if you object to the quality of that piece then there is no way any render setting will satisfy you, or any of the folks that aren't satisfied with "lesser" settings.
As Oshyan puts it, you don't need to crank it all the way up to get great results not in TG2 and not in TG 0.9
Of course if people are trying to push the quality of a 800pix render cause of the unregistered limitations, so I am only stating what results I have on higher 2000-3000 pix and up on a registered version; so pixel count may well be the difference here.
Quote from: Oshyan on March 05, 2007, 05:25:55 PM
Edlo, I'm glad to hear you've had success rendering at fairly high resolutions. Although I don't think your results are necessarily representative, and some people do prefer the quality increase of say 0.75 detail or even 1.0, I do certainly agree that many people are attempting very challenging scenes or simply cranking up detail settings without knowing really what their affect may be. It's easy to understand how one might get frustrated in these cases. Due to TG2's much more complex system it is a necessity that there be more detail adjustments, but this comes with an increased need for understanding of those settings as well. It's regretable that there is no good Renderer settings reference at this time (it is forthcoming), but I think it's fair to say that the defaults are a very good starting point and one should not simply crank all settings up and assume you'll get the best results. This was true with TG 0.9 as well, but is even more so with TG2.
With careful and judicious use of appropriate detail settings I think you can already get reasonable (although not outstanding) render times on even moderately complex scenes. Highly complex scenes and "outstanding" render times will have to wait for the significant optimization due later this year.
- Oshyan
We agree on all counts ;D
Please drop by my stuff so you can see why I am happy with the results these quality settings are delivering for me http://edlo.deviantart.com/gallery/
@edlo....
From your own words on your deviantart site....
"Well the clouds are rendered directly on Terragen2 tech preview, amazing volumetric engine it has, unfortunately too dam slow still"
BTW...you have some very nice work up there...congrats and respect!
edlo - Quotepromontorium
Oh my, I realy like this render. Can't fault the quality. Excellent atmo, surfaces(shaders)and the population fits nicely. Out of curiosity, was your population masked or the result of slope, coverage and/or altitude settings? Second question, was the bird postworked or TG2'd? Thanks for sharing.
I also stopped by and became absorbed in your work, also my congrat's and much respect. Thanks gradient for the heads up well worth the visit. Oh to be able to PW like that.
Quote from: gradient on March 06, 2007, 05:22:47 PM
@edlo....
From your own words on your deviantart site....
"Well the clouds are rendered directly on Terragen2 tech preview, amazing volumetric engine it has, unfortunately too dam slow still"
BTW...you have some very nice work up there...congrats and respect!
Thank you very much ;D yes I find the volumetric rendering to be the one thing that slows everything down greatly. I usually compose the scene, work on textures displacements and terrain features before I even consider adding the cloud layer, or if the cloud layer is essential I have it disabled until the final render but previously test render of several sections give me an estimate of the final render. The point, at least to my eye is that there are work-around´s and ways to make TG2 deliver even in this very early stage; it is quite enjoyable and produce great results. By the way all my renders have been done in a laptop. ;)
Quote from: RedSquare on March 06, 2007, 06:34:41 PM
edlo - Quotepromontorium
Oh my, I realy like this render. Can't fault the quality. Excellent atmo, surfaces(shaders)and the population fits nicely. Out of curiosity, was your population masked or the result of slope, coverage and/or altitude settings? Second question, was the bird postworked or TG2'd? Thanks for sharing.
I also stopped by and became absorbed in your work, also my congrat's and much respect. Thanks gradient for the heads up well worth the visit. Oh to be able to PW like that.
Heya pal; the bird is PW, and the population its in fact controlled by slope, altitude, and fractal breakup in this case.
Sorry not at home in hotel. Nice one, see you don't always need to mask. (If only I could.)