No Extra Output Images

[Kadri]

I would say exporting an object is harder. It could take longer to export and usually needs doctoring. With projection you just render a SR without saving any OBJ and use the saved images in the same project. Yes you can't look around but similar as you told me from doing objects from perspective and not ortho, you dont have much wiggle room with the OBJ either. I dunno if you started doing an ortho so the detail is object-wide.

For me outputting the obj takes much longer than a reflective SR render with layer elements.

I am not saying that it is better. But different workflows for everyone.
I for one would prefer objects. But if you don't it is ok.

As i said above if you render the scene from a little back (from where your camera will be) or use a wider FOV you will get more room to move-rotate. No need for ortho. But you can make a more detailed ortho (you will need a bigger file or make them tiled like Chris) and move even more freely. At least relative to the first method. If you don't move much around and don't have strange problems even an undoctored obj file will mostly work directly exported and imported to Terragen.
If i render two different versions of these methods (standart landscape versus obj) you would have a hard time to know which is which.

But problems will happen if you move a certain way away from the point you made the object.

With this method i can change the camera much more easily and make another render.
With your method it gets (for me) too complicated every time i move-rotate around.

But that is only me and the more ways there are to choose from the better.

I would prefer too see even a basic form how you use your method. By reading i can understand it only so so.

[WAS]

I can't get the appearance to look the same is my issue, and for the time spent just trying to get an object that correctly represents the scene. It takes longer for me to export a proper object. A SR render takes about an hour, it took 3 hours for the last object to finish, which was approaching PT reflection times, which means it was approaching redundancy. Least for my CPU.

And on top of that, if I don't doctor it in Poseray (assuming i can) the obj looks very bad put back in TG.

[Kadri]

Jordan if you want, just for an exercise, give me one scene and i will try to make it into an obj only scene
and the same as the standard so good i can.
But it should be a scene i can use my old version.
Changing from the new to the old is too hard. The changes are too much in the versions now.

[WAS]

The differences in CPUs don't seem to help us here. You seem to be able to export OBJs from TG much faster than I can.

Maybe send me a scene to try to export the OBJ from to see how it is on my system. Cause I'm finding exports really slow.

Also trying a new test using a spherical export.

[Kadri]

Yeah CPU speed difference is an issue. I wouldn't have done some of the work i did lately.
The animation i am making now for example begun as 10-15 minutes per frame in the first 200-300 frames.
Now every frame takes 1 and a half hour.
With my old pc this would have taken more then 7 hours per frame.

[WAS]

The Ryzen 2600 seems to do pretty good for Gaming, but I am noticing a severe cut in performance from just processors one tier up, or even just the Ryzen 2600X. I want to put a new processor in this PC, but also just wondering if i should get a new bundled PC because the way part prices are.

Ex, I saw a laptop yesterday for 1399 which was about double the speed of this current machine. But only 16gb RAM. But the GPU, CPU, and motherboard were all better.

[Kadri]

Go for at least 64 gb ram if you can. After a while you begin just to use more in your scenes.

[WAS]

So a spherical camera also works to do a reflection surface, with a spherical camera for projection. Not sure how accurate that is, but again for such basic reflections in shadow and on mud it's likely all that's needed is those soft sky reflections and some specular.

I think the issue though is the resolution. Now you need a bigger spherical render because it's being overlayed over a larger area. Going to try that to see if it fixes the fuzzy-ness.

[Kadri]

Jordan i just made a test. A render of 800x650 exported a 6 gb obj file.
It took nearly 6 minutes for this. I will try to make this exporting to a smaller file and post here if you want to test it (for speed testing).
It uses just a random scene without anything surfaced etc.

[WAS]

You shout be able to post just the TGD and I can export the same OBJ and also see if its near as quick.

[Kadri]

This scene took 2 minutes 25 seconds to export a 1.6 Gb obj file.
Have a look Jordan.

[WAS]

It only took 1:52 for me. But again it's a perspective. How is this not different from perspective reflection export? It's only a slice of object in the perspectives view, so you can't look left, or right?

Strangely, also, your atmosphere doesn't render in 3D preview, or in the actual render. o.O Just black sky.

I was curious about adding shaders and such, so I added a PF to simulate some microdisplacement. This reveals polygons. So you would have to may have to use a second compute terrain at the end, and hope you have no lateral stuff, and then export that with all the microdisplacement. Which may take longer. Though you can probably compute normals in another program smaller. Poseray seems to have a set normal resolution based on the geometry or something, so for me I have to set compute terrain patch size very small or textures are blurry up close.

PT render took 8 minutes, so it is much faster, at the cost of quality. Seems all these methods have a quality cost, except probably compositing in Photoshop or another app with layer elements.

[Kadri]

It only took 1:52 for me. But again it's a perspective. How is this not different from perspective reflection export? It's only a slice of object in the perspectives view, so you can't look left, or right?

Strangely, also, your atmosphere doesn't render in 3D preview, or in the actual render. o.O Just black sky.

I was curious about adding shaders and such, so I added a PF to simulate some microdisplacement. This reveals polygons. So you would have to may have to use a second compute terrain at the end, and hope you have no lateral stuff, and then export that with all the microdisplacement. Which may take longer. Though you can probably compute normals in another program smaller. Poseray seems to have a set normal resolution based on the geometry or something, so for me I have to set compute terrain patch size very small or textures are blurry up close.

PT render took 8 minutes, so it is much faster, at the cost of quality. Seems all these methods have a quality cost, except probably compositing in Photoshop or another app with layer elements.

Hmm...You see this the wrong way as it looks Jordan.
From your questions it looks like you are always exporting your landscapes wrong, if your exports were long before, as your test of this scene was very fast.

You can disable anything related to shaders except displacements while exporting.
Shadows atmosphere, colours etc. all of them are absolutely not needed. I disabled the atmo and shadows for example.

Those are real 3d polygon objects. No slices (if you mean that).
If you mean that it does have only the part were the camera is looking i already stated that that you have to plan accordingly.
For example for this scene you can put the camera a little further forward. Then you can go a little to the left, right or back and can rotate for example...Or just make a spherical (haven't tried one spherical rendered obj) render export or just 3-4 ones for all sides.

And by adding more detail to this object that is what you shouldn't do actually. You can do it of course if you want.
But the real purpose is adding every detail first in your normal landscape and exporting that as an obj file. Not later.
If you add everything you want and export that, the exported obj file will have all those detail already having in it.
So the render time won't be longer later at all.

[Kadri]

We are talking about this but for a normal fast non problematic rendering scene without reflection etc. i doubt if you would need this.
Planning or not,  in the end the most flexible way is using Terragen without this kind of landscape export and import.
If you want to use the landscape in another software that is another thing of course.

I use this mostly for animation. When you render 2000 frames, half hour versus 1 hour (for example) makes a huge difference (84 days versus 42 days).
But for just an image that takes even 3-5 hours i wouldn't bother.

[Kadri]

You can make for example something like this with your cave scene.
It took from the beginning to the end just 1 hour 10 minutes to make;
exporting the obj, animating, rendering and even making it twice as long in Project Dogwaffle.

If you like movies like Yasujirô Ozu this kind of camera moves are even like a Bourne movie