Object Quality / Render Settings Scripting

[bobbystahr]

I'm certainly interested in hearing more about the real need for such settings though.

- Oshyan

Ditto, my curiosity is piqued....

[WAS]

They had some sort of contract that made them have to finish under whatever circumstances, which caused them to waste a lot of resources and power re-rendering.

Also that exhibit is awesome. Really wish I lived in Europe. We rarely get cool stuff like this.

I do have a question, if there is no need for such settings, why would Terragen waste users times by allowing a sliding scale to go so far? If there is literally no reason, there should be no reason to allow it. A lot of programs go as far as to calculated estimated render/ram load and advise not to use such settings as well. From what it looks like, you could very well accidentally drop numbers into most inputs and crash Terrgan, or stray in extra quality with trailing 0's like my dyslexia earlier.

[Oshyan]

I'd be very curious to know more about this person's project. I suppose you can't share their name?

The slider goes to 64 in Terragen 3's atmosphere samples setting. Terragen is all about not *forcing* limits, so you can put in whatever numbers you want, that's part of its power and flexibility. The sliders are generally meant to indicate the "recommended" or "sensible" ranges for settings (although not all of them have the best ranges set yet).

- Oshyan

[WAS]

I'd be very curious to know more about this person's project. I suppose you can't share their name?

The slider goes to 64 in Terragen 3's atmosphere samples setting. Terragen is all about not *forcing* limits, so you can put in whatever numbers you want, that's part of its power and flexibility. The sliders are generally meant to indicate the "recommended" or "sensible" ranges for settings (although not all of them have the best ranges set yet).

- Oshyan

This is just my project and what he did to "optimize" it for quality. I haven't even touched atmosphere quality besides once when I did have fuzz with that asteroid scene and you suggested 32 samples (believe that was the case).

Unless you mean the person who had the huge render? I can ask.

[Oshyan]

Yes, I mean I'm curious who the person with the huge render was. I guess I got confused for a moment - your friend runs a render farm that this *other* person used on this big Terragen project, is that correct?

- Oshyan

[WAS]

It was contracted by SNSB and GPI?

[Oshyan]

Swedish National Space Board?

- Oshyan

[Kadri]

Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns looks more closer Oshyan but no clue what the other one might be.

[Oshyan]

Hehe, yes, that makes more sense. I was mostly joking with what I said.

- Oshyan

[Kadri]

Hehe, yes, that makes more sense. I was mostly joking with what I said.

- Oshyan

Actually i kind of wanted to do that too and wasn't sure of you   

[Kadri]

What the heck...this was what i wanted to post actually 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXlvy3sTTBk

[bobbystahr]

GPI Gemini Planet Imager

http://planetimager.org/

[WAS]

he did say museum so maybe Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns which is the natural history museum. I also do not know what GPI, I think Bobby might be the closes. 

[WAS]

more on topic, what would you all say the maximum quality document should look like in reguards to detail, aa, cloud, atmosphere, etc. Also computer based optimizations such as cache stuff for 8-12 core computers?

[WAS]

Anyone? Whole reason I ask is he is clearly frustrated with having to edit a project to render so I thought, since I can't render it full resolution I could at least run a script to change the settings I can't input so he can at least render it without touching it. As it seems TGD files are just text as well and PHP handles them fine with correct encoding it looks like.

Since I have no clue what a good quality document looks like (settings are changed from your guy's files immediately) I have no clue how to optimize any settings. For example, if I am rendering out rough clouds, what is a ideal quality so they are not just a explosion of pixels when I get back a full resolution? I've seen tight edges on rough clouds, but even when I use a TGC someone used and only change the seed for a new look, they will be very pixel like.

I also don't want to go over-board and put settings on a cloud too high.

I've also been told a detail of 0.8 with higher AA is better then a detail of 1 and normal AA. So I am overall very puzzled on what's best having absolutely no real experience. Only time I've used full version was school, at at that point I could only use a PF and a couple solid surface layer colours, didn't know what I was doing.