A new pic.........and a question.

[yossam]

I broke down and bought some of the great pines at NWDA. This is the first result.

The question: I know that raytrace objects being checked speeds up the render, therefore unchecking would logically increase the time needed for render. By how much ? The first render with rto on finished in about 4 hours. Wasn't liking the outcome, so I did the pic again with rto off. Almost 24 hours later it finished. The only difference in the settings for the two renders was that one little checkbox. Although the pic looks better.............24 hours ??

[Matt]

It depends on the complexity of the models and how many there are. With Ray Trace Objects OFF, the trees are rendered with the micropolygon rasteriser. Render times are quite sensitive to scene complexity or detail. When you ray trace these objects, however, render times scale in a more friendly manner as you increase the amount of detail in your scene. That's because because ray tracing is more sensitive to the number of pixels and anti-aliasing settings, and a bit less sensitive what's actually in the scene. With the kinds of scenes we render these days, where there might be many polygons occupying the same pixel, ray tracing is usually the best bet and is getting better all the time.

I'm not sure I agree about which image is better, although I haven't compared them side to side. In TG, ray tracing the objects usually produces a better image.

Matt

[yossam]

Here is the other render............with rto checked. Roughly 4 hours from start to finish.

[jbest]

Yeah, it's a little different. The newer version is darker, but with a comparison of 4 hours to 24 hours, I think the extra 20 hours for your first result might not be worth it.

[FrankB]

which AA setting have you used for the RTO ON render? By the way I find the RTO render much more appealing, realistic and cleaner.

I suggest to do a final render on these pines with AA=6, or even 8 if you have patience.
Remember it's pretty much only the AA setting that determines the object quality, once RTO= ON.

Second setting to look at is detail and the GI settings. you could probably render this with good shadow lighting at detail 0.5, GI 2/3 + SSP, and AA = 6
Adding "soft shadows" in the lighting node makes things look even more realistic and shadows to be less harsh.

Regards,
Frank

[Kadri]

Not sure about the leaf parts etc. But the trunk parts are bad with ray trace.
It looks like the micro render gives displacement and the other render is too artificial looking because of this...
It would look better if you could make the trunks with better bump mapping that works with ray tracing.

[yossam]

Here is the render using Franks suggestions................

[reck]

It's a hard decision. With RTO on you get the fast render times but the quality of the tree's goes down. As Kadri pointed out the trunks of the trees look terrible with RTO on, they look like smooth bits of plastic. As soon as RTO is off though you get the nice displacement which makes the tree's look a lot better overall.

So to my eyes, RTO off = quality, RTO on = speed. Hopefully one day we won't have to compromise.

BTW those tree's are really excellent aren't they

[dandelO]

Looks good.
Remember to raise the displacement amplitude in the bark shaders when using RTO, this will make the bump mapping more apparent.
I imagine you've left the displacement setting at the same level for both renders, you might try a level of '1' for displacement when using RTO, which would likely look bad when not using RTO. I think that when bump mapping/rto is used, a setting of '1' is 'full bump at 100%' and anything lower is just whatever fraction of that you use, it obviously can't be measured in metres any more as there is no displacement.