Planetside Software Forums

Support => Terragen Support => Topic started by: TheBlackHole on May 01, 2011, 01:46:23 PM

Title: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: TheBlackHole on May 01, 2011, 01:46:23 PM
I'm having this weird problem with parallel lines in both PFs and cloud fractals. I'm using TG2.2 Free on Vista. If anyone could help that would be great.
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: Tangled-Universe on May 01, 2011, 02:11:34 PM
I tested it and I think there's nothing strange happening.
Your render settings are quite low and together with the lowish resolution it created a pattern.
Here's a crop of that section rendered at 1920x1080:
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: Tangled-Universe on May 01, 2011, 02:16:00 PM
BTW, I rendered it @ detail 0.7 and AA4 with raytraced atmosphere (RTA) enabled.

I suppose you're using the free version of TG2?

If so, then I'd recommend to render with detail 0.8, RTA enabled, AA3 and GI 1/2/8 as I don't think this scene needs high GI settings.
With detail @ 0.5 the GI will be 0.5 x 2/2 = GI 1/1.
With detail @ 0.8 + GI 1/2 the GI will be 0.8 x 1/2 = GI 0.8/1.6 which is similar as above, but faster (likely).

As for RTA and AA3: set atmosphere samples not higher than 24, usually, and keep your cloud quality setting around 0.7 max.
If that is not sufficient you can either choose to adjust AA3 to full sampling instead of the default first 1/4th, or increase samples slightly.

Cheers,
Martin
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: TheBlackHole on May 01, 2011, 03:12:45 PM
I tried your settings and the lines did not go away. They're still here, only smaller. >:(
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: Tangled-Universe on May 01, 2011, 03:16:04 PM
Ghehe, you're probably that type of guy who only reads the last message :P, re-read my first message and look again at the image I posted ;)
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: Matt on May 01, 2011, 07:12:28 PM
It might be Acceleration Cache on the cloud layer. Set that to None.
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: TheBlackHole on May 01, 2011, 09:19:44 PM
I think I found the problem. I removed the surface layer I was using to fade out the upper cloud levels and the lines disappeared. I have no idea why a surface layer would make these lines. ???
Title: Re: Power/cloud fractal lines
Post by: Tangled-Universe on May 02, 2011, 03:34:28 AM
Quote from: TheBlackHole on May 01, 2011, 09:19:44 PM
I think I found the problem. I removed the surface layer I was using to fade out the upper cloud levels and the lines disappeared. I have no idea why a surface layer would make these lines. ???

Yes, I forgot to tell you I disabled that surface layer in my test.

My reason was different though:
The surface layer restricted altitude to min. 2000m with 500m fuzzy zone, while the cloud layer itself already was at 2000m altitude with 1000m depth.
The cloud-node restricted itself already so there was absolutely no need to do that.

It might have to do with the kind of coordinates texture-space/world-space the surface layer uses for restricting and its disability to accurately do that over the entire planet (hence things get more "difficult" further away from the origin).

I think that might also have been the problem with your surface layer.