Little Buggy

[EoinArmstrong]

My 5th attempt at rendering this - I had to stitch 2 renders together coz my quadcore, 3GB RAM system couldn't handle it, apparently... and then it finishes with a dark blob on one of the mountain edges... oh well

[Oshyan]

Nice looking, if you can get rid of the blob. Scene and render info?

- Oshyan

[schmeerlap]

You'll never believe this, but this eedjit was scouring your scene for a "little buggy". Oh! . . . . . you do.
Excellent scene, Eoin. Love the terrain and surfacing, and that's great fog down there.
Tree deployment is a little too spaced-out and random for me; I find denser groupings more effective. Random dispersal on the tops of mountains can lead to some trees being instanced in incongruous positions; better to use a painted shader for more control here.
Have you tried a crop render where your black splotch occurs? Does it reoccur? It can be caused by small displacements, and can sometimes be fixed by increasing GI Relative Detail and GI Sample Quality. Experiment with displacement adjustments, even the Strata and Outcrops Shader, in a wee crop render.

John

[EoinArmstrong]

Hi there - Hehe, thanks for your comments

Yes, I prefer bunched and thicker pops too, but my machine doesn't

I was rendering with 3 high-qual (not highest-qual!) pops - no more than 4,500 instances between them all
Qual 0.9, AA 5, GI 3/3
SubDiv Cache 200
Min/Max threads 1/16 (default)
1 cumulus layer (fog) 46 samples, atmo 64 samples
rendersize as you see it (1280x1024 more or less!)

The blotch didn't occur in any of my smaller previews - only in the right-hand cropping.

[MacGyver]

I'm a bit surprised, you seem to have a good machine and your settings look ok, so just my guess that it's not your hardware...

[Oshyan]

Yes, strange, it does not seem to be a particularly demanding scene. What OS are you running?

- Oshyan

[EoinArmstrong]

XP Pro SP3

I did a small, lower-qual render of a pov much closer to the trees, and it appears that the 2 Tamarind models I used (from the Africa DVD) are rather high-poly... maybe that could be the reason.  I can't get a full poly-count, though (or can I?).

[Oshyan]

If you go to the TG2 install directory and load tgdcli.exe instead of tgd.exe, it will bring up a command window in addition to the regular TG2 UI. This will output lots of diagnostic info, including total triangles/polygons, total number of populated objects, etc. You should also watch your Task Manager to see how much memory TG2 is using. If you have high poly trees, it may be that you're still using more than 2GB of memory, which is the limit in 32 bit operating systems like XP SP3 (unless you have the /3gb switch enabled).

- Oshyan