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Support => Terragen Support => Topic started by: neon22 on March 01, 2007, 04:48:36 AM

Title: red red render error
Post by: neon22 on March 01, 2007, 04:48:36 AM
In doing my Cave tests - I ran into a number of screwball renders where the whole or part of the image was blown out to red.
attached are two.
I noticed that:
- if I saw a red pixel in the initial GI pass then the image was going to be affected
- but not seeing one was no guarantee that the image would not be red
- initially I assumed it was a memory problem and closed and reopened and setup the tgd again.
   it would generally not blowout twice in a row.
- but I also tried just restarting it and that seemed to avoid the red effect just as often.
- as you can see it happens in localised areas - but I also had one where the entire image was red.

Hope this helps to work out what's causing it.
(I would say its a memory leak somewhere but not just in the GI section - but that's not very helpful is it :-) )
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: mrwho on March 01, 2007, 01:31:40 PM
yah, i've had that happen too, I was about to make a thread on it ;)  I had it happen once when I tried rendering with no atmospere, and another time with lots of rocks. I couldn't render it any larger than 450 x 350 (or something like that) so I'm not sure if it's a program issue or my computer was being funny
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: bigben on March 01, 2007, 05:59:04 PM
I have seen this once a while ago in one of my skies, but can't remember the exact circumstances. I do remember, though, that I found an error in my settings that would effectively cause nothing to render in that part of the image so it may be a deliberate feature(?)
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: old_blaggard on March 01, 2007, 06:15:36 PM
No, all weird coloring in image is a bug right now.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: king_tiger_666 on March 01, 2007, 06:42:55 PM
I've had that happen too. I've found that it is a node i have set up causing it, where some settings are wrong or changing camera position slightly seems to fix it
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: rcallicotte on March 02, 2007, 04:09:21 PM
I think this might be related to GI.  Turn everything in GI to 0 and see what happens.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: Oshyan on March 04, 2007, 06:11:57 PM
This is a known bug that has been covered several times elsewhere on the forums before. Generally it seems to be related to GI so you can try turning both GI detail settings to 0 in the Renderer and see if it goes away. However as has been noted often times simply restarting TG2 or the system can also fix it so if GI is important to your scene, that's a better approach. Certainly this bug will be resolved in the future.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 08, 2007, 02:36:02 AM
I have attached a tgd which always seems to render the atmosphere in red. It will render the first cloud layer fine in the quick render, but anything above it is red and the atmosphere will never draw correctly in the preview window. I think I was playing with the atmosphere height just before it occurred if that helps.
After reading several other posts, I have tried turning off GI, changing the enviro light model, turning of enviro lighting, restarting (app and pc) but to no avail. Have I missed a workaround somewhere or is this being caused by a different issue (like user error)?
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: Oshyan on March 08, 2007, 11:29:59 PM
Hi Duff,

This appears to be an Acceleration Cache issue, which I don't think is necessarily the cause of some other examples of the "red render" problem. In your case the fix is easy - just turn off the Acceleration Cache in the Quality tab of your "Cirrus Layer 01".

- Oshyan
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 09, 2007, 11:19:51 AM
Thanks for that.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 09, 2007, 02:12:29 PM
I have attached a updated file with all the caching turned off and I still have a red band. See image.
The tgd should be what I rendered, have I missed something?
If it makes any distance I'm generating the heighfield first.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: Oshyan on March 10, 2007, 12:40:52 AM
To be honest I had not tried rendering the complete image, only enough to see that the majority (I assumed all) of the red had gone. If you disable both cloud layers completely does the red go away?

- Oshyan
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 10, 2007, 04:03:46 AM
I removed the cirus layer and all the red apart from a tiny patch in the first cloud layer went.
I am going to start this afresh as the composition wasn't really what I was after anyway just though I'd raise it in case it was an unseen issue.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 10, 2007, 04:45:02 AM
Some further info..
I just created a new scene and ended up with the same issue.
It would appear to be caused by setting any of the xyz components of the Noise Stretch in a cloud layers density fractal to 0.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: Oshyan on March 10, 2007, 04:15:07 PM
Seems like 0 would be an invalid value, assuming it's a baseline multiplier. That would mean the output of the function would be 0, so it's hardly surprising that would cause an error.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: duff on March 10, 2007, 05:49:20 PM
If it's not to be set you can guarentee I'll set it!  ;D

Although I think the one above with the red didn't involve that (or at least the cirus layer with it set was disabled)
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: AndyWelder on March 26, 2007, 05:17:16 AM
Have this render problem too, but now everything went red..., not just the sky.
The previews rendered at 800x600 and 0.3 detail went fine but the full render at 1024x768 and 0.71875 detail showed nothing but red.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: rcallicotte on March 26, 2007, 08:45:45 AM
Andy, did you turn off the GI settings - zero them out?
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: AndyWelder on March 26, 2007, 09:12:41 AM
Quote from: calico on March 26, 2007, 08:45:45 AM
Andy, did you turn off the GI settings - zero them out?
Nope, I used my "default" value of 5. Why should I cut back on quality?
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: rcallicotte on March 26, 2007, 09:16:11 AM
Andy, there's a problem with GI.  That's why you see red in your render.  The temporary solution is to cut back on those two GI settings to zero.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: AndyWelder on March 26, 2007, 10:34:28 AM
Thanks, calico; I've one running now with GI unchecked.
Still, I don't get it, why we should abandon from a high quality setting....? And I never had this problem with GI at 5, only difference now is the atmo sampling of 64 where it was 32 in my previous renders.
Title: Re: red red render error
Post by: rcallicotte on March 26, 2007, 11:19:12 AM
Do you have raytraced unchecked in your atmosphere and clouds?  That isn't necessary, since it has something to do with shadows coming from the surface up.

Another thing, you might check around about your settings.  Most of these settings don't need to be slammed to get high quality.  For example, I use 16 or 32 for most of my atmosphere settings, while I might go a lot higher for the clouds themselves.  Another one is the render quality.  I never use 1 and usually use .6 for a final render, unless I am making a large render and then I go to .8.  But, I'd bet I couldn't tell you the difference by looking at one with a .8 compared to a .6.  Another setting is the GI setting.  I rarely go over 2.  It just isn't necessary from what I can see.  Then again, because I don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Most of this understanding...well, no...all of the understanding I have about this has come from the support staff and many of the end-users like you and me who come here and share their experimentation, etc.  One of the first things we heard about TG2 was the need to be aware that cranking the values to maximum will usually only increase render time and not necessarily make any visible improvements. 

Good luck.