GI Settings

[Will]

Hey everyone I was wondering what everyone used for GI settings on their final renders and that people have found to be a good mid point betwean speed and quality. Also what would you recomend for Animation?

[JimB]

So far, having the GI settings at 1 works okay generally for me. With some I've gone to 2 with GI Surface Detail switched on for closer views of terrain surfaces.

A note about animation: GI affecting clouds/atmosphere leads to every frame 'flickering' in the clouds. It looks like the GI is recalculated per frame and is not being baked into the clouds. This really is something Planetside needs to sort out to maintain the same quality of imagery in animation as seen in stills, as the final look is not as realistic and murkier.

[buchvecny]

first of all switch off GI for clouds. IT doesnt have the wanted effect, it just prolongs render time. For general settings i would go 1-2 and 3 for extreme causes. The GI detail takes ages to render

[Will]

thanks for the tips guys, if GI baking being consitered for the future releases like with Deep+animation?

[jo]

Hi,

thanks for the tips guys, if GI baking being consitered for the future releases like with Deep+animation?

Yes, we are considering that.

Regards,

Jo

[Will]

Thanks Jo

[JimB]

first of all switch off GI for clouds. IT doesnt have the wanted effect, it just prolongs render time. For general settings i would go 1-2 and 3 for extreme causes. The GI detail takes ages to render

Down to personal taste I think, unless you mean only for animation? GI in clouds certainly does have a considerable effect on how they look and their realism, IMHO.

[Superza]

Hey everyone I was wondering what everyone used for GI settings on their final renders and that people have found to be a good mid point betwean speed and quality. Also what would you recomend for Animation?

Due to my experience, i suggest not to use GI surface details Flag:
In my render with terrain (less effect with only water render) GI surface details dramatically slow the  GI "pre-render".
In my next renders i'll try to compare the quality, i'm not sure on the GI surface details effect in the quality of render.
About other settings i found reasonable value like 3 or 4
Regards Max

[JimB]

GI in surface details seems to bounce the light around within surface layer displaced detail, IIRC. I remember testing it a couple of weeks ago and there was a marked visible difference. But I'd only consider using it where the camera is close to the terrain as the rendering hit can be quite high, as said previously, or if render time wasn't an issue.

[sjefen]

Hi,

thanks for the tips guys, if GI baking being consitered for the future releases like with Deep+animation?

Yes, we are considering that.

Regards,

Jo

I seam to be getting really good digging up old threads
Anyway... I was wondering if there are any news on this GI baking thing?

Regards,
Terje

[rcallicotte]

Yes, I'm wondering the same thing as sjefen - The Deep Animation package: are there any plans for this?

[Matt]

A note about animation: GI affecting clouds/atmosphere leads to every frame 'flickering' in the clouds. It looks like the GI is recalculated per frame and is not being baked into the clouds. This really is something Planetside needs to sort out to maintain the same quality of imagery in animation as seen in stills, as the final look is not as realistic and murkier.

I have used GI in clouds on a number of real productions recently, involving lots of cloud, and GI flickering has not been a problem. A GI sample quality value of 3 is sometimes good enough. Rarely is more than 5 or 6 needed. It increases render times, but not by a great deal. I know that it probably depends on other factors, and some scenes will be more stubborn.

EDIT: Any time you have a scene that flickers even with high GI settings, please let me take a look.

The main source of flickering that I have found is the cloud layers' Acceleration Caches. I need to set them all to "None" to prevent flickering. This is completely independent of GI though.

I plan to implement GI baking this year.

[sjefen]

Hi Matt,

That sounds really great, but what if I'm going to render a really big image and have to do it with crops?
Will there be visible stitching?

Regards,
Terje

[Matt]

If you were rendering all the parts using the same baked GI file, there would be no seams.

[sjefen]

I'm sorry Matt, but I don't follow you with this. Can I bake the GI?

- Terje