Render Concern

[Shashin]

Evening!

I have a question about TG2 that I can't really answer myself. I'll need to explain the details a little, though, so please bear with me:

I currently use Vue 6. Nice enough program. Problem is, I only have a single-core 3GHz Intel Processor and about 1GB of RAM. So whenever I try to render something large enough that I could print it professionally, Vue unceremoniously crashes on me (I'm talking renders of 3508x4960). Now, before giving my PC a much-needed overhaul, I was wondering if anybody knows (or has a way of finding out) if TG2 (or TG 0.9, if it comes to that) could handle a render that large on a PC of those specs without falling apart?

Odd question, I know, but I have no way of testing this myself seeing as I'm only using the unregistered version at this stage. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,

~Shashin

[rcallicotte]

You'll perhaps hear various answers, since TG2 can be somewhat complex enough to not answer this question straightforward.  This is due to render settings, amount of objects in the scene and other settings such as Environment Lighting, Soft Shadows or even cloud quality. 

The simplest answer is - No.

You probably need a little overhaul and RAM is cheap, isn't it?  TG2 could easily use 4G of RAM, depending on the OS (such as Windows XP 64) and it will use all of the CPU you can give it.  Even then, the size you're talking about, depending on the complexities of your scene, could still choke with TG2.

[PorcupineFloyd]

I'm quite sure you could succeed in such render with 2GB of RAM but with 1GB chances are rather small considering you need some memory for OS too.

Yesterday I did a render in 3600 x 2400 px and TG2 was using 1.3GB of RAM at peak moment but as calico said - it depends on a scene.

[Mohawk20]

I can do 4096x3072 renders on a machine with 2 Gb, but 1 Gb should be possible for simple scenes, as long as you render in parts (crop renders). Some scenes will definitely crash though, so a little bit of extra RAM would be preferable.

[old_blaggard]

You will certainly be able to do a TG 0.9 render of that size on a machine of those specs. What everybody has already said about TG2, though, is accurate.

[Zylot]

Hey wow, those are the exact specs I have

Yeah, I wouldn't render in such high resolution.  Still, as long as you make sure there's some RAM left for anything else, it'll render...  just, it'll take a while.   A long long while.

[plugsnpixels]

Here's a real-world example. I am presently rendering one of Frank's fantastic Dutch painter cloud scenes, unmodified, at 2672x1670 on an Intel iMac (2.4GHz core 2 duo, 2 gigs RAM). I'm not using it for other tasks, just letting it run.

At nearly 66 hours, the final image is half completed, with a black strip ready to be rendered and two strips of dots remaining...

When I return to the office after the holidays, where I have a Mac Pro with 8 gigs of RAM, the results would probably be delivered more quickly!

I should add that while not capable of the same degree of realism as TG2, Vue is MUCH faster at rendering, even on older machines. Of course TG2 is not finished yet, with much optimization yet to be delivered.

[rcallicotte]

I didn't know this.  This is good news.

...with much optimization yet to be delivered.

[plugsnpixels]

Sure, after a number of years, it just reached beta status recently ;-).

[Shashin]

Wow, so many responses! Thanks everyone.

@calico: Okay then. Well, that's good to know, and you're right - RAM doesn't cost that much. I've actually been considering building a new PC from scratch, but I've been putting it off because I don't really want to spend the money. If I'm going to need more RAM, though, I may as well finish the job... hmmm, we'll see.

@Mohawk20; PorcupineFloyd; Zylot: Thanks for the advice, guys. The crop render idea makes sense; I have a bad feeling I'm going to be using it quite alot!

@old_blaggard: That's very good to know! Thanks very much for confirming for me.

@plugsnpixels: Thanks for the example. And thanks for the info regarding Vue - it's good to know what I currently have renders faster, but it doesn't do me much good if it won't even start rendering my images. I probably should have mentioned that I've tried the same scenes on a dual-core 2.2Ghz laptop running Windows Vista, with 2GB RAM, and it still won't even start rendering.

Thanks again everybody for your advice - that makes my job alot easier! Hopefully I'll have something worth contributing one day.
Kind regards,

~Shashin

[PorcupineFloyd]

(...)
I should add that while not capable of the same degree of realism as TG2, Vue is MUCH faster at rendering, even on older machines. Of course TG2 is not finished yet, with much optimization yet to be delivered.

Vue is much faster in certain situations. Vue is a hybrid renderer what means that you can use a heightfield + bump mapping + standard lightning + 2D clouds and that certainly will be insanely fast but try doing something which in TG2 is really normal and widely used - displacement mapping. It will take hours to render and it will eat abundant amounts of RAM. Not to mention spectral atmospheres with noise-free clouds and so on and so on. Vue is fast because it's marketed as being fast.

TG2 is a small, specialized piece of software with it's main approach being procedurals - Vue is hybrid.

But yes, TG2 could do with some additional optimizations - especially on the side of volumetrics. Vue indeed is faster in rendering volumetric lightning. There are also other fields like amount of people hired in Planetside and e-on software and the price itself but we'll go too much off topic on that ;-)