Newbie question 1 - saving/viewing previous renders?

Started by SteveR, June 29, 2013, 04:02:43 PM

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SteveR

Hi all, just bought Terra2, and got  a bit of time today to have a play, made me a planet - looks okayish - but work to do :)

One thing I need to ask re workflow. These sorts of apps usually have a render history, where you render an image, tweak the settings, render it again and then flick between the 2 to see the key differences in the render. Helps the workflow a lot when experimenting. Very used to doing this sort of thing in Modo. As far as I can tell there is no such functionality in T2, so I was wondering if anybody knew a good way to do it (other then save each render out with a manual file name).

Many thanks
Steve

Oshyan

Hi Steve, you're correct that there is no "render history" feature available at this point. It's something we do intend to add in the future. In the meantime Terragen does output renders to a temporary folder, whether aborted or completed, and I find a good approach is just to keep this folder open and use a good image browser like XnView to look at what has been output so far.

In Terragen 2 the output goes to the Temp folder, and you can find the folder(s) with the Explore Temporary Files option the File menu. Temp files are put into a new folder every session (every time you restart the app), and are numbered sequentially (though not consecutively). So just open the most recent folder and you should see all renders done so far in the session in there. They're saved as BMPs in TG2.

In Terragen 3 you have more options. You can choose where the automatic output files go (and whether they are even saved at all), and also what format. New options for 8 or 16 bit compressed TIFF are a good trade-off of file size, flexibility, and compatibility for example.

- Oshyan

SteveR

Thanks Oshyan, sounds like a plan :) That will help me a lot - cheers
Steve

Dune

What I often do with a test (cropped) render is copy screen, and paste it in Irfanview. Cut it out and keep IV on top for direct comparison.

SteveR

Thanks Dune, yes that would work. I have tried the XnViewer thing and that works pretty well - does the job.