Planetside Software Forums

In the thread about render speed of the new version I mentioned that my animation takes twice as long to render a frame with the new build.

This post (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5980.msg62937#msg62937) has a screenshot of windows explorer which shows the times taken in the old and new version. I just rendered a frame that was faster with the old build, and it rendered in 1:52 hours, which is consistent for the new build.

The post also has the tgd attached, and I was wondering if anyone (like Oshyan  ;)) could give me any news regarding this.

I downloaded the tgd, however I do not have the animation module I did render the first frame in 20 minutes.
If you can make a tgd of the frame where the huge increase in rendertime occurs then I can render and compare it again.

Martin

It's not a frame issue... it's a build issue.
Try rendering that first frame in the new gold build, and the last beta build, and tell me what the difference in render time is.

You do seem to be having some real problems don't you. What processor model do you have? Also are you able to whack a different OS onto another hard drive or something?

Quote from: Mohawk20 on April 10, 2009, 01:34:54 PM
It's not a frame issue... it's a build issue.
Try rendering that first frame in the new gold build, and the last beta build, and tell me what the difference in render time is.

I'm aware of that. I expected longer render-times if it was a build issue. 20 minutes seems ok to me, but if it is way less with the beta then it is indeed a build-issue.
Hang on...I'll render it with the beta...

21 minutes and 5 seconds... So the 2.0.1.1 is a tad bit faster.

To me it seems it is not a build issue then.
I'm not familiar to what extend you can animate parameters, but perhaps you accidentially enabled something from a certain frame which is responsible for the increase in rendertime?

I wonder what kind of pc you have TU... ;)
I rendered the first frames in about 30 minutes, and later on that gradually became 50 minutes as the camera gets closer to the planet.

But without changing any setting I saved, installed the upgrade, loaded, entered new starting frame number and rendered again. Now all the frames take exactly an hour longer, so almost 2 hours. I re-rendered one of the 'faster' frames, frame 2174 (I upgraded at frame 2176), and it took as long as all the other frames I rendered with the gold version. So forget a frame issue, nothing changed there.

It's either a bug in the software (in the '+ Animation' version), or in my pc... the latter is also a good possibility of course  ;)

So if anyone can render frame 2174 (or a sequence from 2170 to 2180) with both the beta and the gold build and tell me the results, I'd be a step further in solving this.

Do you have a link to the old beta build? I've got deep + animation.

Quote from: Mohawk20 on April 10, 2009, 02:57:18 PM
I wonder what kind of pc you have TU... ;)
I rendered the first frames in about 30 minutes, and later on that gradually became 50 minutes as the camera gets closer to the planet.

But without changing any setting I saved, installed the upgrade, loaded, entered new starting frame number and rendered again. Now all the frames take exactly an hour longer, so almost 2 hours. I re-rendered one of the 'faster' frames, frame 2174 (I upgraded at frame 2176), and it took as long as all the other frames I rendered with the gold version. So forget a frame issue, nothing changed there.

It's either a bug in the software (in the '+ Animation' version), or in my pc... the latter is also a good possibility of course  ;)

So if anyone can render frame 2174 (or a sequence from 2170 to 2180) with both the beta and the gold build and tell me the results, I'd be a step further in solving this.

For the moment 'just' a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz and 8GB RAM...am saving money for an i7 though...
Anyhow, I see your point.
That the rendertime increases over getting closer to the planet is logical of course, but that extra hour is indeed strange. If it is a hardware-problem then frame 2174 would also take long, don't you think so?

Is there a way for you to create 2 tgd's for me? One of frame 2174 and one from frame ~2180. I'd be happy to test them for you.

I'm thinking that when getting closer to the planet you'll reach a certain threshold for detail (or whatever) which suddenly could increase rendertime. Can't really describe my thoughts well, but it *could* all be correct, sadly.

Quote from: PG on April 10, 2009, 03:36:07 PM
Do you have a link to the old beta build? I've got deep + animation.

If you keep your e-mails then you should have still have it.

I have the tgd of the save in between upgrade, at frame 2177 (attached).

If you render it in both versions and notice no big difference, I hope PG can find something...
PG, does this work for you?

The Free Non-Commercial Edition of Terragen 2 Beta:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/downloads/Terragen2BetaFree110231.shtml

Terragen 2 Technology Preview 5 (Build 1.9.99.1):
Edit by Mod - LINK REMOVED - DO NOT POST PUBLIC LINKS TO REGISTERED VERSIONS

And the system I'm running this animation on is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4600+ with 2 GB RAM.

Hey Mohawk,

I rendered frame 2174 in both versions.

Final: 31:19

Beta: 20:54

Hope this helps you narrow it down.

Hmm, so that means that the beta was faster in this planetary render...

But you had a 150% increase, I had 210%... maybe it's time to check my pc.
Shut down, reinstall, stuff like that.


Thanks!

OK, I've just tested this on the last 4 versions, the Beta, an unreleased RC1, the Final, and the upcoming 2.0.2.1 update. I was able to confirm that the original Beta rendered it a good deal faster, but you'll be happy to know it does appear that the next update somehow resolves it. Here are the full details:

Q6600 2.4Ghz 4 cores
8GB RAM

23m54s - 1.10.23.1 (Beta)
34m27s - 2.0.0.1 (RC1)
35m01s - 2.0.1.1 (Final)
23m22s - 2.0.2.1 (forthcoming update)

So it seems things are back to normal, and the terrain gap bug is also fixed. Hopefully other people who have seen speed increases will not lose them with the update. ;)

- Oshyan

Good news!

Thanks for testing. I do think it's time for me to start saving money for a faster system though...  ;) Sadly that would be systems, because my other pc has just about the same specs. So it's gonna take  while before I can fully upgrade...

The nice thing is you can keep the old ones around as render systems. ;D

- Oshyan

Well, actually, I was thinking of only upgrading the insides, so I wouldn't have 4 pc's that are rendering non-stop, using more power than the rest of the household together. (Yes, I'm 24, yes I'm still living at home, yes my mom is complaining about the electricity bill, yes I will pay her more 'rent' as soon as I start working longer next month.)  ;D

But if you want you can buy the mobo's an cpu's from me...  :P but I don't know if they're worth anything by the time I get new stuff.

Bit late but.

Beta render time 16:02
Final render time 54:41

I noticed that the beta version threw up a helluva lot of warnings about various features that it didn't know about that obviously came from the final version which happily chugged along. Obviously it chugged slower, and that's because it's doing more. One other thing I noticed was that in the beta version, you know how after the GI pass is done the buckets that are next to be rendered will go black? Well 8 buckets went black when I only my 2 cores are detected. In the final version 2 buckets go black.

I just rendered frame 2276 on my other pc and it ran for 2:10 hours, so it's not just system depended.
I'm glad you had a similar big difference in render time PG. Have you noticed that the final version drew 2000000 microtriangles more than the beta?

I hope the next release will come soon, in the mean time I'll just continue rendering slowly  ;)


Thanks everyone for helping and testing!
Now I know the extra render time is due to the upgrade, but the long render time in general is just my system.

Quote from: Mohawk20 on April 11, 2009, 06:36:58 AM
I just rendered frame 2276 on my other pc and it ran for 2:10 hours, so it's not just system depended.
I'm glad you had a similar big difference in render time PG. Have you noticed that the final version drew 2000000 microtriangles more than the beta?

Extra micro-triangles, so this could be what I tried to explain.

As you come closer to the planet the rendertime increases beceause the surface-area of the planet increases in the image.
As getting closer to the real surface the renderer probably decides somewhere to subdivide into another LOD and then adds extra microtriangles.
So you probably just passed a threshold somewhere where the renderer adds more detail to the planet's surface.

This together probably is non-linear, so maybe in a couple of 100 frames later the renderer again decides to subdivide into another LOD.
Rendertime will increase again then and also extra micro-triangles will be added, resulting in increasing rendertime similiar to what we see now (perhaps).

Hi PG,

Quote from: PG on April 11, 2009, 05:35:46 AM
I noticed that the beta version threw up a helluva lot of warnings about various features that it didn't know about that obviously came from the final version which happily chugged along. Obviously it chugged slower, and that's because it's doing more. One other thing I noticed was that in the beta version, you know how after the GI pass is done the buckets that are next to be rendered will go black? Well 8 buckets went black when I only my 2 cores are detected. In the final version 2 buckets go black.

Did you check the About Box to see how many cores are detected? The splash isn't showing the correct number at the moment. If 8 threads were being used for some reason and you only have 2 cores then that could account for at least some of the much slower rendering time.

Regards,

Jo

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on April 11, 2009, 07:07:55 AM

Quote from: Mohawk20 on April 11, 2009, 06:36:58 AM
I just rendered frame 2276 on my other pc and it ran for 2:10 hours, so it's not just system depended.
I'm glad you had a similar big difference in render time PG. Have you noticed that the final version drew 2000000 microtriangles more than the beta?

Extra micro-triangles, so this could be what I tried to explain.

As you come closer to the planet the rendertime increases beceause the surface-area of the planet increases in the image.
As getting closer to the real surface the renderer probably decides somewhere to subdivide into another LOD and then adds extra microtriangles.
So you probably just passed a threshold somewhere where the renderer adds more detail to the planet's surface.

This together probably is non-linear, so maybe in a couple of 100 frames later the renderer again decides to subdivide into another LOD.
Rendertime will increase again then and also extra micro-triangles will be added, resulting in increasing rendertime similiar to what we see now (perhaps).

You could be right, except for the fact that it was a different number of triangles for the same frame. So the distance to the planet was exactly the same, the only difference was the build version...

Then the builds could differ in the handling of subdivion detail.
At this point it's just a theory so perhaps someone of Planetside has to jump in.

I'll have a look when I get back, see if I can note down the specific warnings. @jo. I looked in the preferences and it said 8 but wasn't overridden. I've done a lot of renders with enforced 2 cores and enforced 8 cores and the render time was almost exactly the same, I've tried it with the blank scene and with really complex ones too so my machine doesn't seem to get clogged up with overhead.

I'm getting lots of undefined prototypes of functions in their respective classes. I only assume.
SetParamFromString in class render gets;
pixel_filter              //these 4 come up twice, I'm guessing they are called twice.
anti-aliasing_bloom
microvertex_jittering
detail_jittering

SetParamFromString in class surface_layer gets;
enable_test_colour   //10 times
test_colour             //10 times

SetParamFromString in class cloud_layer_v2 gets;
darker_unresolved_scattering //twice

Hmmm...that's strange. Which version do you use at the moment?
Can't imagine you have a version without these features.
You're also regged aren't you?

Actually, TU, check your older versions... I found that the latest beta build 1.99.99 is gone. The folder is still there, but the exe is gone. And if you try to install that version the installer says a newer version is already installed.

The newest version that still works is 1.8.64, which doesn't have a lot of functions, and still has 'color', in stead of 'colour' in all the nodes. So that will cause a lot of error messages for stuff the older version just can't read.

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on April 11, 2009, 02:12:33 PM
Hmmm...that's strange. Which version do you use at the moment?
Can't imagine you have a version without these features.
You're also regged aren't you?

These errors are coming from the beta build, I'm guessing he saved the TGD in Final with some new features used like the changes to the pixel filters and jittering.

Quote from: Mohawk20 on April 11, 2009, 02:56:23 PM
Actually, TU, check your older versions... I found that the latest beta build 1.99.99 is gone. The folder is still there, but the exe is gone. And if you try to install that version the installer says a newer version is already installed.

The newest version that still works is 1.8.64, which doesn't have a lot of functions, and still has 'color', in stead of 'colour' in all the nodes. So that will cause a lot of error messages for stuff the older version just can't read.

Uhmm...I don't understand what you want me to do? You want me to check if this works in 1.99.99??? I can't follow you.

Which version# do you use PG?

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on April 11, 2009, 04:59:34 PM

Uhmm...I don't understand what you want me to do? You want me to check if this works in 1.99.99??? I can't follow you.

I was just answering your question to PG. You couldn't imagine using a version without these functions, but the 1.99.99 version is gone if you have installed the final, and those features were not yet used in older versions...

At least, I can't find the exe file for 1.99.99 anymore, it's gone from it's folder. Can you still use it? Does the splash screen of your beta version say build 1.99.99?

yeh mine disappeared also uninstalling itself back when i installed beta, however final did leave the beta build installed fine.

Ah right, thanks for clearing up.

I should install the 1.99.99 version seperately then and check it out, but I'm rendering now so can't do that right away.

A tip for installing previous versions:

Uninstall all existing TG-versions.
Install the oldest you want to install.
Move the installation folder to another drive.
Install the newer version.
Move the installation folder from the old version back to its original folder.
You should now have 2 separate working versions.

Yeah I'm using the Final (2.0.1.1). I was just using the beta (1.9.99.1) for testing Mohawks TGD

You should compare with Beta build 1.10.23.1. That is the latest stable Beta that you should have been using already. It has all the pixel_filter settings etc.

Matt

Ohw, dûh, stupid me... I thought 9 was higher than 1.0, but it's 10  ::)

Our switching the number of digits in the filename probably didn't help...  ::)

I'm happy to inform you that after a few frames with the new patch, the average render time per frame is 1:05 hours. As the camera is still coming closer to the planet, that is about the same as before the final, so Matt, the patch fix works!

Thanks.