BlueBell and Silver Birch Dawn (working)

[cyphyr]

Tried another forest scene, you know god ray streaming through the subtly illuminated leaves, dappling across the forest floor etc, etc. It didn't crash but it did fail, screeny attached.
Guess I'll try again with lower settings, I just wish there was a way of knowing if a scene was going to fail without having to wait 26+ hours (in this case).

Vital stats:
10 populations ranging from approx 50 to 1.5mil at medium to high detail (only the bluebells are at very high detail)
1000x600
26h58m (fail)
0.9 ~ 10 ~ 2 ~ 2 ~ 4
SubDiv Cache ~ 400Mb
2 x enviro lights (AO 0.5 & GI.1.2)
Atmos default
Fog layer 128 samples

I'll try again with lowered settings, dropped the sub div cache to 300 (it'll give me a warning but hopefully not one that will produce any visible error) and the fog layer samples to 64. I think I'll turn off ray trace shadows for the fog layer although it is a risk as I don't want to loose the subtle lighting but hey...

I'll keep you updated

richard

[PorcupineFloyd]

Nothing new if you ask me...

I'm struggling with the same error every time when I try to render a scene with lots of vegetation.

It started to happen after TG2 final release (2.0.2.1) and never happened before. It sucks as I'm limited to resolutions not bigger than 1500 x 1000 px and can't render anything bigger.

[PorcupineFloyd]

By the way, check my thread about the same problem - http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6201.0

Here's the screen shoot from the error window:

[Hannes]

You could try to render this (beautiful!!) image in quarter crops and stitch it together later on.
Try to leave RT shadows on in the fog. It looks so good!

[cyphyr]

Yeah I think your right. Looks like PS have made some optimizations to the renderer that are speeding thing up somewhat in simpler scenes but "don't cut the mustard" for object/population intensive scenes. Whatever it is I don't care too much about render time for the final image as long as it gets done; can take a week for all I care as long as I know its not a wasted week.

Oddly it seems there's a correlation between high atmos settings and errors in the populator, its almost like the higher quality settings affect the populators ability to count! lol

richard

If my currant attempt don't work I will try the quarter crop meathod, thanks

[FrankB]

what a shame, this would have become a really (!) nice render!
You can still try and reduce the subdiv cache further, maybe that helps. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'll have to wait for TG2 64 bit to really make scenes like this fly.

Regards,
Frank

[Oshyan]

Looks like a tremendous scene! I think you're on the right track for getting it to render, if it is indeed possible with the amount of memory-using elements you have in the scene.

As far as these crashes being new to 2.0.2.1 or other recent versions, to my knowledge we've yet to see true side-by-side comparisons with older versions. If anyone wants to do this with their more demanding scenes and *verify* that it's actually a new problem, that would be tremendously helpful. From what I can see it just seems like people are trying more and more complex scenes (which is a natural progression) and it happens to have coincided with the final release, so it *appears* to be related to newer releases, but I am not convinced that it actually is. I saw plenty of instances of the memory-related errors prior to the final release, and it's just something we'll have to put up with until we are able to go 64 bit and/or implement better error handling (in which case the problem would still fundamentally exist, it would just be handled more gracefully).

In any case we are investigating these issues on our end already, but some conclusive side-by-side testing from the user community would definitely help.

One thing I will say is that there were some GI-related optimizations made specifically in the last release, 2.0.3.1. Are you using the latest version?

- Oshyan

[PorcupineFloyd]

I thought that most recent up to date full version is 2.0.2.1. Is 2.0.3.1 available for download?

[cyphyr]

2.0.3.1 is currently available as the free limited download, will simply plugging my key file in there make it a full version?
richard

[jo]

Hi,

We'll have v2.0.3.1 Deep available shortly. Next few hours I'd say.

Regards,

Jo

[PorcupineFloyd]

Glad to hear that. Can't wait to put my hands on those optimizations ;-)

[cyphyr]

Well I disabled the raytrace, lowered the detail and AA but upped the dimensions, no idea how long it took to render as I had to re-set the system clock part way through.
The image below is the raw un-messed with version together with a tone mapped version (photomatrix) layered at 50% and I rubbed out the badly exposed sun area.

Vital stats:
10 populations ranging from approx 50 to 1.5mil at medium to high detail (only the bluebells are at very high detail)
1600x960
??h??m
0.8 ~ 8 ~ 2 ~ 2 ~ 4
SubDiv Cache ~ 300Mb
2 x enviro lights (AO 0.5 & GI.1.2)
Atmos default
Fog layer 64 samples

I'm really tempted to try again with raytrace shadows on again in the fog layer, lowering the size again but keeping the other settings the same.

Comments and Critts welcome as usual

Thanks for viewing

Richard

[rcallicotte]

Richard, it's very nice in color and perspective.  Cool fog and cool shoreline.  The trees could be more various. 

[efflux]

Cool. Nice to see the whole thing.

[MacGyver]

Looks very promising! It's a pity that the rays are gone