Technology Preview 4 (Build 1.9.98.1) is out!

[Cyber-Angel]

Any system you purchase *new* at this point will exceed the minimum system requirements. We will be finalizing the minimum requirements for the product launch.

- Oshyan

Thanks Oshyan.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel   

[Zylot]

Alright, some great news.. I also have to go to work, but luckily I had a render all set to go, so my PC will do the work while I'm gone.

I doubt I'll see any real marked improvement in rendertime, having only a single core CPU, so I;m more pleased with the increased stability.  I suspect I'll have a finished render tomorrow

[Yoda Almighty]

really, I care less about quality, and more about speed. the free source project I am working on for which I need Terragen requires 500+ 612x285 images. I have no real time limit, but I would prefer it not take 3 years. 

[Steph]

Hello

Just a question about this new update. I have seen no significant render speed with the TG4 on the MacIntel version  (I have  2 x quad Xeon). And it seems, as says on this thread,  that TG4 PC version is much faster than the previous (TG3).

The default scene took more than 45 seconds to render with the defaut quickrender setting.

Is the TG4 MacIntel version not yet optimised or it's me ?


Thanks for answering (and excuse my bad english).

[Matt]

TG2 reports how many cores it has detected in its startup/about box. This may not be the correct number, so TG allows you to override this number in Preferences.

Even if the detected number is correct, you may find that you get better results by reducing this number. If TG detects 8 cores it will render with 8 threads at once, unless your min/max thread settings in the render node prevent this. You may find that 4, 5 or 6 threads are more efficient, so you should experiment. You can either use the override in Preferences (which is a guide for how many threads a render should use), or reduce the max threads in the render settings to how many threads you want to use.

I would be very interested to see what results you get. Maybe even try as low as 3 threads.

Regarding TP3 vs. TP4: The speed difference between TP3 and TP4 may not be noticeable on all machines. There was a bug which seemed to afflict some configurations more than others.

Matt

[Steph]

Hello Matt

Thanks for the quick answer.
First, TG2 reports the correct number of cores (8 cores) it has detected in its startup/about box.

Second, I try what you say with the default scene and quickrender setting. Here the results :

With overriding the core number in Preferences :

1 core : time render 13 secs
2 cores : time render 8 secs
3 cores : time render 14 secs
4 cores : time render 25 secs
5 cores : time render 40 secs
6 cores : time render 40 secs
7 cores : time render 44 secs
8 cores : time render 46 secs

When playing with Minimun Thread and Maximun Thread in the quickrender sttings, I find that best result are using 2 for Max thread.

But I must says that during these tests, the computer was busy calculating an image with TG 0.9, wich I think should use only one core (I could not stop that render, more than 35 hours and not yet finish !!). So perhap's I must doing these tests again when TG0.9 will have finished.

I will be curious to know why the results are better using only two cores.

Hope this could interested you.

[cyphyr]

Great update, seems much more stable, not one crash yet
As regards speed I'm not noticing any difference at all, if anything a little slower.
For reference my machine is a core 2 duo 6600 running at 3.4Ghz oc'd from 2.4Ghz with 3gig ram
The old render time for the benchmark scene was 1m39s and now its 1m43.
Richard

[nikita]

@Steph You should try again with a more complex scene or at least one that takes longer to render, otherwise the overhead of managing the threads might eat up the performance gain.
Additionally, the communication between the two cpus might be a problem too.

[Steph]

Thanks Nikita

Good suggestion.You are propably right. I'll test that as soon as possible.

[rcallicotte]

I'm hearing many praising the latest build as being without problems, but I'll be clear that I've had multiple lockups, slowdowns and quite a few blowups.  Otherwise, there might be the mistake by another person reading this that everything is peachy.

That said, I do appreciate the many changes to this version and have had fewer problems than the previous Alpha.  The rendering looks sweeter somehow, as though the lighting is beyond what it was.  This, of course, is subjective, since I have no proof of the changes in the final beauty of my renders.   

[ZStar]

This version is definitely more stable and fixes or at least improves a number of critical problems with the previous build.  Good work Planetside.

I will second calico's comments about there still being issues.  I still encounter the occasional crash after many test renders.  I also still see dropped buckets in my foliage on high res/high quality renders.  My current WIP uses fill lights not GI so I have been able to crop render patches to paste onto the full image to cover the dropouts.  I know that fixing the dropouts was high on Matt's list.  There has been definite improvement.  For me, the dropouts that remain are smaller and more easily patched.

[Oshyan]

ZStar, if you're still seeing dropped tiles it would be really helpful to work more closely with you to see if we can duplicate the problem in-house and hopefully resolve it. So far in our testing dropped tiles are not happening anymore with TP4 (although the "population counter" error does occur in cases where a tile would normally be dropped, but it has so far not seemed to affect final render quality in our test scenes). If you can provide a full scene that reproduces the problem reliably that would be great.

Contact us at support AT planetside.co.uk if you are able to work with us in diagnosing the problem.

Thanks,

Oshyan