One feature request to rule them all...

[absolutehavok]

*

[sonshine777]

There is one problem with your idea there is no way TG@ can forecast which direction you will move your camera. By moving you camera you change all of the data being fed into the virtual lens just like a real camera the slightest move in one direction will change the intersection point(or focal point) of every part of the scene. That is why it has to re-render with each change. Our hope is that the render engine for the preview get quicker with future updates.

[oggyb]

However, when you move the camera the faces already rendered do already move in relation to this, and you can zoom in and out also without immediately causing a rerender.

I think the point being made by absolutehavok is that these faces that aren't rerendered could remain so whilst the rest of the scene (the bits that have been subsequently put into the viewfinder) renders as normal.

M.

[Dark Fire]

There is one problem with your idea there is no way TG@ can forecast which direction you will move your camera. By moving you camera you change all of the data being fed into the virtual lens just like a real camera the slightest move in one direction will change the intersection point(or focal point) of every part of the scene. That is why it has to re-render with each change. Our hope is that the render engine for the preview get quicker with future updates.

It is only meant to be a preview. I think the preview should be based on a faster, less accurate render system than the main render feature, and features like those suggested by absolutehavok could be incorporated. If an accurate preview is required, the 'Quick Render' can be used. I agree with absolutehavok about the necessity of this feature, as fine-tuning the placement of cameras can be a long process with the current re-render-every-time-you-move-the-camera-or-make-a-small-change system...

[Oshyan]

You can certainly count on improvements to the preview render speed and usability for the final release. Although ideas like this may not be directly implemented due to various feasibility problems, I think you'll find the final preview system to be pretty effective given the trade-offs involved.

Comparing to preview systems of other applications, and given the assumption of further optimization, I think TG2 does fairly well as it is. We could potentially use a simpler and faster system (keep in mind that you can already turn off realistic lighting and atmospherics to speed up the preview), but then you'd have to do more tweaking and test renders in many cases because the preview wasn't as accurate. So it can be an issue either way, really. I agree that providing the option of a faster but less accurate preview would be nice, but given the tight development focus and timeline way may need to focus on the single existing preview and just make it better/faster.

- Oshyan

[Dark Fire]

At this point I would suggest that I should write some software to solve the problem, but I know I'll never have anywhere near enough time to actually do that...

Perhaps we, the forum users, could create an open-source project at SourceForge that solves small problems like these. Obviously this problem is not a good example, as it would take a lot of work to make an optimised cut-down open-source preview renderer from scratch, but there are other problems that have been raised on the forums that could be more realistically solved...

[Oshyan]

At this point I would suggest that I should write some software to solve the problem, but I know I'll never have anywhere near enough time to actually do that...

Perhaps we, the forum users, could create an open-source project at SourceForge that solves small problems like these. Obviously this problem is not a good example, as it would take a lot of work to make an optimised cut-down open-source preview renderer from scratch, but there are other problems that have been raised on the forums that could be more realistically solved...

The plugin system would be ideal for those projects. I'm quite sure there will be a number of features we won't have time to tackle which will make good community-developed plugins.

- Oshyan