Renderer and Quality Settings

[KlausK]

Hello everyone

I am Klaus.
I am lurking, reading and learning in this forum for a long time and made the move to create an account today.
So, hello to you all.

Some facts and figures about me - very briefly I promise.

Years ago I used Terragen (version 0.x something) on and off, got back to it for a short period of time during version 2
and could not bear the long rendertimes one had to cope with with that kind of software and the then available computer power.
Last year I invested in a new computer: Dual E5-2640v3 2.6GHz, 64 GB of RAM.
Now, this box makes terraforming much more fun again .
So I am in the process of evaluating Terragen a little bit closer.

Working on scenes in Terragen 3.3 and doing render tests.

Nodes are: Fractal Terrain, masked with Simple Shape, a Fractal Warp and a Compute Terrain.
This feeds into a Base Colours node.
The Atmosphere together with a Cumulus Layer Low and connected Density Fractal creates the skies.

Below is a picture of a simple scene showing a fast preview and a few crops from a 1920x1080 px render.
crop:
crop left:      0.817391
crop right:    1.0
crop bottom:   0.42471
crop top:      0918919

The captions used stand for:

t - rendertime () for the crop
AA - AntiAliasing
detail - Detail setting in the Renderer
cumuqual - Cumulus Quality

Take a look at the scene file to investigate other settings, please.
The right most crop t55_AA8_detail_1_cumuqual_1.3 ist the most beautiful of the tests for my taste.
Since this crop took 55 minutes to render I did not tackle the full render yet.

Lots of time went into testrendering this already, always changing one setting everytime in little steps.
I would very much appreciate it if you, the experienced users in this forum would have a look at the examples
and offer some thoughts about wether the rendertimes are what I would have to expect in these kind of scenarios.
Any hints about settings which more or less do not affect the overall look of the scene are welcome, of course.
I read the sticky post about the render settings, not sure if I understand how the different Quality numbers interact, I`m afraid.

So, can`t think of more atm...sorry for this long first post.

Hope to talk to you on a more regular basis from now on.
KlausK

[bobbystahr]

Hi KlausK...welcome to the forum....Have you read this thread:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,6442.0.html

A most helpful thread....

[Dune]

Welcome, Klaus. Good to have another enthusiast on board. Regarding the quality settings and render times; I can't really tell whether it's long or short for this kind of render, but I can tell you that detail of 1 is usually too much. Set it around 0.6 to begin with, and 0.8 is already pretty good. AA8 is helping the clouds, but you can also lower that to say 6 and increase cloud quality from 0.5 to around 1, and see what happens in quality and render time.
It all depends on a lot of factors, so it's usually a matter of experience and testing, and it seems you're wll on your way in that.

[Oshyan]

AA8 is *not* helping the clouds here *unless* Defer Atmo is enabled. Otherwise it has little/no effect and in a scene with no objects, plants, etc. it is overkill. For this scene exactly as it is, AA4, Detail 0.75, cloud Quality 1 would be my recommendation.

- Oshyan

[KlausK]

@ bobbystahr and Dune - thx for welcoming me here.
@ bobbystahr - that is the thread I was referring to when I wrote "sticky post about render setting".
Have to read through the text a few more times along with more render tests...
@ Dune - thanks for the suggestions. Some of them I already tried, others I will check out.
Time will tell what kind of setup takes how long to render, I guess.
@Oshyan - Defer Atmo was enabled in the tests with this scene.
When disabling Defer Atmo and pushing other values for quality did not result in getting rid of the noise
in the overblown light through the clouds like it did with the settings I posted. But that maybe user error,
of course. Wrong combination of values. I am going to try your recommendation as well, thx.

Well, patience and persistence is the key to working with software like Terragen, deep down inside I know that of course.
But :godverdomme: I want that pic now, hahaha!

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to answer.
Klaus

[Oshyan]

No, I would actually say that in this case Defer Atmo might not be a bad idea. BUT in that case the main render quality has no effect on cloud quality. Thus it only affects terrain, and I would suggest using 0.5 or 0.65 then, along with AA6-8, cloud quality 1. With Defer Atmo enabled AA and Cloud Quality are the only things that really affect cloud render quality. One thing you can try since you have a strong mix of dark and light is to increase the Adaptivity of your AA. Go into Edit Sampling for the AA and try 1/16 or 1/64 first samples, but with higher AA values, starting at AA8 I suppose. This should give you a better balance of render time and quality.

- Oshyan

[KlausK]

Thank you Oshyan.

I have attached another picture with two new crop renderings, using the settings you suggested.
The crop on the left "t14..." is fast but not very good.
Then changing AA back to 8, and the first sampling level from Max Samples (Non-Adaptive) to
1/16 first samples let the rendertime for the crop jump to 42 minutes again.
Detail in the Quality tab of the Renderer was changed from 1 in the first renderings I uploaded to 0.75 .
None of the other settings were different from the settings of crop "t44" and "t55" to the right
and far right respectively. Since I would like to get rid of as much as possible noise in the clouds
I will try a full render of the scene with the higher settings from the crop far right sometime soon.

If that scene was part of a professional project I'd definitively try to tweak the setup as much as possible.
Try to find other solutions for the light bursting through the clouds. Perhaps a artificial lightsource instead
of the sun and combine two renders or something like that. Don't know if that would help in terms of rendertime.
But for now I am just curious and the tests perhaps serve as a useful sort of comparison for that kind of setup.

Ok, that's it for now.
cheers, Klaus

[Oshyan]

When you tested with AA4, did you *disable Defer Atmo*? If not, it's not the test I was suggesting. I wasn't aware in the first place that you were already using Defer. AA4 would only be useful without Defer in this case.

Anyway I think you are close to finding some fairly optimal settings for your scene.

- Oshyan

[KlausK]

Just for the record and to end this thread a rendering of that scene with rather high quality settings.
That`s why there is only a smaller version so far.
How Terragen is able to render the whispy steamy foggy clouds in the background is really quite beautiful.
Not sure if the jpeg conversion introduced a little bit of grain though. Whatever...

Time: 164 min / AA: 16 / Detail: 1 / Cumulus Quality: 1

The render results with lower settings are quite revealing.
With such few elements in the scene the viewers eye pics up the tiniest flaws in noise.
I think I learned quite a bit about render settings and their interactions.

Cheers, Klaus