UltraScenery [Commercial]

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Comments

  • How much available RAM do you have, Rev 2019?

    I use a PC with 16Gb, and in an extreme case with 2 figures, 14.5 Gb was used, of which 8.5Gb appeared as US generated the scene and 2.5Gb for the OS. The longest I have had during generation from the script (not the compiled plugin) is 21 mins using a 2013 vintage 4 core Xeon running at 3.1 Ghz. Significantly more than that might indicate your RAM is being exceeded (unlikely as a 3090 would tend to indicate a high spec system compared to mine) or there is something peculiar about the way it's working in your system.

    Regards,

    Richard

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited January 2021

    Wow...first use of Accelerator, ran it (thought it was installed) and the scene generation took 30 minutes.

    Realized I had not updated from 1.1 version, downloaded and installed to version 1.3 accelrated.

    ...took 66 seconds  surprise

    That's a speed increase of 4 Gigantillion!!!!  Great work!  Result:

     

    Post edited by I-am-Cho on
  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited January 2021

    This is Ultrascenery Features - None, Ecology - Oaks 4 with DA Let It Snow.

    2021-01-11 22:08:16.908 Total Rendering Time: 3 hours 59 minutes 27.5 seconds

    Click on image for full size.

    ultrascenery-oaks-snow-copyright-001.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 247K
    Post edited by Fishtales on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    Nice snowy scene.
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084
    edited January 2021

    Got a question about rendering times ...

    I've installed accelerator and am experimenting with it. The build times are fantastic, but it seems I've taken a significant rendering hit. I have two GPUs and have always been able to render quickly, but I am getting only (in my test doc) 72 iterations after 5 mins of rendering, despite both GPUs supposedly being utilized per the Advanced rendering settings NVIDIA IRAY Devices dialogue box.

    (1) Instances behind view are not being eliminated (restricted) when the build is generated (despite having restrict instances to view checked)

    (2) USC Camera can't be found in scene (it's not being placed into scene automatically during file creation, and trying to import it only brings in the USC camera box, not a camera), so instances restricted to camera (whether my camera or the non-existent USC camera) doesn't work

    (3) optimization is on "memory"

    Is this a known problem?

    BTW--what should the nVidia control panel setting be in order to maximize rendering times?

    EDIT: using Camera Optimizer eliminated stuff behind the camera and boosted the iterations from 70its in 5 mins, to about 100 its in 5mins, but the speed is still ridiculously slow. Other renders do muliple iterations per second ...

    Post edited by mcorr on
  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471

    A few questions:

    1. For cameras, is there a way to hide the shrubbery in like a 10'x10' section in front of the camera?  I kept running to bushes while rendering the above, until I got very close to the jeep on the road/path.
    2. If I make a scene using US, and then setup cameras, and then delete and regenrate the scene, with the same seed, will it be the same? 
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    3dOutlaw said:

    A few questions:

    1. For cameras, is there a way to hide the shrubbery in like a 10'x10' section in front of the camera?  I kept running to bushes while rendering the above, until I got very close to the jeep on the road/path.
    2. If I make a scene using US, and then setup cameras, and then delete and regenrate the scene, with the same seed, will it be the same? 

    Check out Camera Optimizer as a possible solution .... works for me

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited January 2021

    mcorr said:

    Got a question about rendering times ...

    I've installed accelerator and am experimenting with it. The build times are fantastic, but it seems I've taken a significant rendering hit. I have two GPUs and have always been able to render quickly, but I am getting only (in my test doc) 72 iterations after 5 mins of rendering, despite both GPUs supposedly being utilized per the Advanced rendering settings NVIDIA IRAY Devices dialogue box.

    (1) Instances behind view are not being eliminated (restricted) when the build is generated (despite having restrict instances to view checked)

    (2) USC Camera can't be found in scene (it's not being placed into scene automatically during file creation, and trying to import it only brings in the USC camera box, not a camera), so instances restricted to camera (whether my camera or the non-existent USC camera) doesn't work

    (3) optimization is on "memory"

    Is this a known problem?

    BTW--what should the nVidia control panel setting be in order to maximize rendering times?

    EDIT: using Camera Optimizer eliminated stuff behind the camera and boosted the iterations from 70its in 5 mins, to about 100 its in 5mins, but the speed is still ridiculously slow. Other renders do muliple iterations per second ...

    What version of UltraScenery and the what version of Accelerator are you using? There have been some updates since they were released.

    I recently learned that a scene built with the Accelerator will not exactly match a scene built without it. Differences between the mathematics (rounding or random numbers perhaps) result in some differences between the two scene builds. BUT - that hasn't affected render time in my experience. It really sounds like your render has dropped to CPU. GPU-Z is a free utility that can monitor things like graphics card memory usage and whether the render is happening in GPU or CPU. The Daz Studio log file will also tell you if the render has fallen back to CPU. Check and see what it says. Maybe your scene is just too big.

    All instances except large trees should be restricted to the camera view. Large trees are not restricted by design, because they provide significant shadows to the scene that helps make it look real. Also, if you chose Extend forest, you will have background trees beyond the border of the terrain. Compared to things like Base Grass or Leaf Litter (which are restricted), large trees have few instances and don't overload the GPU. 
    Large trees on the terrain are usually the only things with Proxies, so if you just look at the unrendered viewport, it will look like restrict to camera didn't work when it really did work. Use the Top View and zoom out so you see the whole terrain. Render. You should see a wedge of total vegetation (the area the selected camera could see), with scattered large trees even outside that wedge. (See attached render.) The wedge is the section of instances restricted to the camera view. If you see grass and other vegetation over the whole terrain, then something is wrong. 

    USC Camera is a resource used by the UltraScenery script. A user does not need to (and should not) add it to a scene. It is in a Resources folder in the Content Library. The files in that folder are just resources for the script. Daz did a poor job with product metadata for UltraScenery. They should not have categorized the USC Camera as a user accessible Camera.

    Rrestrict to Camera near center.jpg
    2000 x 1500 - 3M
    Post edited by barbult on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited January 2021

    3dOutlaw said:

    A few questions:

    1. For cameras, is there a way to hide the shrubbery in like a 10'x10' section in front of the camera?  I kept running to bushes while rendering the above, until I got very close to the jeep on the road/path.
    2. If I make a scene using US, and then setup cameras, and then delete and regenrate the scene, with the same seed, will it be the same? 

     1) mCasual Jacques also has a free Scene Clearing script that can remove instances in front of, behind, or all around a camera. Here is a Daz forum thread about it.

    2) That's a good question. Are you just asking, or do you have some experience you can share? I haven't specifically tried deleting and recreating with the same seed. I think it should be the same. Just adding cameras shouldn't change the UltraScenry build. If you mean that you change the build to restrict the build to the camera view, then I think it may not be exactly the same. For example, UltraScenery uses "affinity" to attract some instances close to others, and to repel some instances away from others. If the object that you were previously attracted to is no longer in the scene, then affinity won't work the same way. If, on the other hand, the restricting to camera view isn't done until the whole scene is built, then I think it should look the same.
    I'm going to go try these things and see what happens.

    Post edited by barbult on
  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited January 2021

    Thanks all, I completely forgot about the MCJ script, I may have even asked him for that, lol!  I stopped Ultrascenery cause the long generation times...but that has changed  :)  I am going to move that script into my US content folder so it's in my face.

    Yea, I loaded a scene, and then got the camera and stuff correct, but then wanted to reload using that camera with intances on that camera only

    ...so I redid it, and forgot my original seed, I think it was 296 but...who knows.  That being said, does this look correct?  I have restrict instances to the camera, you can see it in white...and extend forest is checked.  Shouldn't all the stuff be in front of the camera and extend out past the edge?  (mossy hollow 2 and dirt track, nothing else here)

    Post edited by 3dOutlaw on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited January 2021

    3dOutlaw said:

    Thanks all, I completely forgot about the MCJ script, I may have even asked him for that, lol!  I stopped Ultrascenery cause the long generation times...but that has changed  :)  I am going to move that script into my US content folder so it's in my face.

    Yea, I loaded a scene, and then got the camera and stuff correct, but then wanted to reload using that camera with intances on that camera only

    ...so I redid it, and forgot my original seed, I think it was 296 but...who knows.  That being said, does this look correct?  I have restrict instances to the camera, you can see it in white...and extend forest is checked.  Shouldn't all the stuff be in front of the camera and extend out past the edge?  (mossy hollow 2 and dirt track, nothing else here)

     

    I can't tell from this image whether it is working correctly or not, but I believe it is. You are only looking at the viewport proxies. Extended forest does not have proxies, so those trees won't be visible until you render. Large trees are not restricted, as I mentioned, so you will still see those proxies and they will still render, when instances are restricted to the camera. 

     I tried to replicate your scene. The viewport looked very similar to what you have. Mossy Hollow 2 is so dense, I don't think rendering from the top will give you visibility down to the grass and bromeliads level. You'll just see all those trees. So, I hid the Trees Layer in the Scene pane and rendered from this top view. I can clearly see that the grass, flowers, seedlings, etc. are rendered only in the wedge of the camera view. (See attached render)

    A test you can do to convince yourself that it is working is this: Build the scene without restricting to camera. Expand the UltraScene in the scene pane and look at how many instances are created of things like Base Groundcover Layer. Then rebuild with restrict to camera and compare the number of instances. In my case Base Groundcover Layer went from 132426 to 29904.

     

    USC Mossy Hollow 2 restrict to camera Trees Layer hidden.jpg
    2000 x 1500 - 2M
    Post edited by barbult on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    I tried two experiments with building an UltraScene without and with restricting to camera. In both cases, the renders were almost, but not completely identical. It looks like plants that have origins outside the camera view are culled when restricting to camera. So some vegetation that showed up near the side and front edges of the unrestricted view were missing in the restricted view. The "missing" items were things like some small tree branches and leaves that were overhanging the edge of the scene.

    So, I am comfortable with building a scene I like, and then rebuilding with restrict to camera, to reduce the GPU load of the scene. If the "missing" elements bother you, I have seen a recommendation to back the camera up before building the scene with restrict to camera, and then moving the camera back to the original position before rendering. That causes UltraScenery to generate a little bigger margin around the actual camera view.

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471

    barbult said:

    I tried two experiments with building an UltraScene without and with restricting to camera. In both cases, the renders were almost, but not completely identical. It looks like plants that have origins outside the camera view are culled when restricting to camera. So some vegetation that showed up near the side and front edges of the unrestricted view were missing in the restricted view. The "missing" items were things like some small tree branches and leaves that were overhanging the edge of the scene.

    So, I am comfortable with building a scene I like, and then rebuilding with restrict to camera, to reduce the GPU load of the scene. If the "missing" elements bother you, I have seen a recommendation to back the camera up before building the scene with restrict to camera, and then moving the camera back to the original position before rendering. That causes UltraScenery to generate a little bigger margin around the actual camera view.

    Thanks for checking it out!  I will render top down like you to confirm as well. 

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited January 2021

    Nope, here is what I got, and my selections.

    Note:  It's Mossy Hollow 2...not that it should make a difference.

    Post edited by 3dOutlaw on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited January 2021

    3dOutlaw said:

    Nope, here is what I got, and my selections.

    Note:  It's Mossy Hollow 2...not that it should make a difference.

    I think maybe you missed one of my replies. I  went back and highlighted it in red text.  Because Mossy Hollow 2 is so dense, the large trees which (by design) aren't restricted to camera are blocking your visibility to the other instances that are restricted. 

    Did you try the experiment I suggested about comparing the number of Base Groundcover instances?

    Post edited by barbult on
  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471

    OK I'll check that...but shouldn't be extending off the square like your is?

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    3dOutlaw said:

    OK I'll check that...but shouldn't be extending off the square like your is?

    Yes, it should, if you built it with the options you showed in the screenshot. 
    Can you attach the scene file here, or give a link to it in Dropbox or something?

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471

    I tried some scenes from scratch, and they are working as expected, both extending, and through your number of items test, so it is something in my Tomb Raider Scene.   (I wanted to do that first before having you spend more time on my problem)  I am going to save her and the jeep out as a subset and bring them back into a pre-made scene, it should load in the same spot.  I will let you know if it fails still afterward...only thing I can think if it does is a memory issue.  Fingers crossed!  (ill edit this post with an update)

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084
    edited January 2021

    barbult said:..

    What version of UltraScenery and the what version of Accelerator are you using? There have been some updates since they were released.

    I recently learned that a scene built with the Accelerator will not exactly match a scene built without it. Differences between the mathematics (rounding or random numbers perhaps) result in some differences between the two scene builds. BUT - that hasn't affected render time in my experience. It really sounds like your render has dropped to CPU. GPU-Z is a free utility that can monitor things like graphics card memory usage and whether the render is happening in GPU or CPU. The Daz Studio log file will also tell you if the render has fallen back to CPU. Check and see what it says. Maybe your scene is just too big.

    All instances except large trees should be restricted to the camera view. Large trees are not restricted by design, because they provide significant shadows to the scene that helps make it look real. Also, if you chose Extend forest, you will have background trees beyond the border of the terrain. Compared to things like Base Grass or Leaf Litter (which are restricted), large trees have few instances and don't overload the GPU. 
    Large trees on the terrain are usually the only things with Proxies, so if you just look at the unrendered viewport, it will look like restrict to camera didn't work when it really did work. Use the Top View and zoom out so you see the whole terrain. Render. You should see a wedge of total vegetation (the area the selected camera could see), with scattered large trees even outside that wedge. (See attached render.) The wedge is the section of instances restricted to the camera view. If you see grass and other vegetation over the whole terrain, then something is wrong. 

    USC Camera is a resource used by the UltraScenery script. A user does not need to (and should not) add it to a scene. It is in a Resources folder in the Content Library. The files in that folder are just resources for the script. Daz did a poor job with product metadata for UltraScenery. They should not have categorized the USC Camera as a user accessible Camera.

     

    Thanks for your reply!

    According to IM the latest versions are installed and GPUZ says both GPUS are being used (no fall back to CPU).

    It turns out that the rendering speed problem is a function of how close up my renders are ..... when I pull the camera out, the render is fast. The behind trhe camera (or view) instance restriction also seems to be solved.

    **That leaves me only with questions about why the viewport crashes when I try to look at my scenes using the iray preview and how to have a USC camera put into the scene. It can handle other scenes, but seems overloaded on a USC scene.

    **EDIT: figured out the preview crash .... it wants the CPU to be checked too. It won't do the iray renderport without the CPU checked for USC scenes. It will not crash if it's a subset (only trees but no grond, etc. IF I have cpu also checked (with the GPUs) on the interactive side9, but crashes even then if it's a full scene with everything in it.

    Post edited by mcorr on
  • Don't use iRay preview. I think I read somewhere that iRay preview cannot be set to use memory optimisation, so if it needs memory optimisation instead of speed in the main render, it will need the same in preview and it isn't going to end happily. Just don't use iRay preview with US - think how long it's likely take just to start if it wasn't going to crash.

    Not tried filament, I must admit. It may be worth a bash.

    Regards,

    Richard.

     

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    richardandtracy said:

    Don't use iRay preview. I think I read somewhere that iRay preview cannot be set to use memory optimisation, so if it needs memory optimisation instead of speed in the main render, it will need the same in preview and it isn't going to end happily. Just don't use iRay preview with US - think how long it's likely take just to start if it wasn't going to crash.

    Not tried filament, I must admit. It may be worth a bash.

    Regards,

    Richard.

    That would explain it .... really smart move to limit the preview like that.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,214

    I only have Ultrascatter and I can tell you Filament needs it all visible in Viewport 

    so I doubt UtraScenery will work well

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,131

    I have scenes I want to render in Filament but can't because to render in Filament you must have the viewport also set to Filament. That requires more than 4GB RAM for that scene (according to Task Manager in Windows 10 it requires 5.1GB (video) RAM).

    That is with DS 4.15. The same scene would render in Filament in 4.14 if I set up the sequence of viewport & renderer types in order correctly.

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    nonesuch00 said:

    I have scenes I want to render in Filament but can't because to render in Filament you must have the viewport also set to Filament. That requires more than 4GB RAM for that scene (according to Task Manager in Windows 10 it requires 5.1GB (video) RAM).

    That is with DS 4.15. The same scene would render in Filament in 4.14 if I set up the sequence of viewport & renderer types in order correctly.

    There are many things I would like to do without all these mindless, endless hassles ... like just create art without interruption.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,458

    nonesuch00 said:

    I have scenes I want to render in Filament but can't because to render in Filament you must have the viewport also set to Filament. That requires more than 4GB RAM for that scene (according to Task Manager in Windows 10 it requires 5.1GB (video) RAM).

    That is with DS 4.15. The same scene would render in Filament in 4.14 if I set up the sequence of viewport & renderer types in order correctly.

    So DS 4.15 require more of video RAM? Thanks for the warning.

     

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    I finally installed the updates and the Accelerator this evening.  Behaving much better.  Can turn on/off in the plugs panel now. 23 sec. build time vs. 9 mins.

    Still have the issue with the Tangy Apple Ecologies.  Is this a W.I.P. or was there a work-around I missed?

     

    Tangy Apple USC Issue.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 320K
  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,009
    edited January 2021

    i haven't put out a US image in awhile ... I already forgot what I used here, but one of the pines for sure. no postwork on this,

    ultra2.png
    1200 x 1200 - 3M
    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Nice treatment.  Now ya just need some Canadian honkers in there...

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Well, still not quite ready for Prime Time.

    I started testing a couple other enviros from the Tangy Apple set since that's what I've been having problems with.

    So, as a bit of a change up using Dirt Track #4 and TAO #4, AND the Accelerator, the Build proces s hangs if ANY of the Birches are used. Task Manager isn't indicating the Daz is not responding, but it's cherrfully not doing anything.

    If I go with the exact same settings w/o the Accelorator, all including the Birches goes to completion.

    So, whad's up wid da Birches?

    USC DirtTrack#4_TAO#4.jpg
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    All Beeches OFF.jpg
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    TAO#4 Birches Turned OFF.jpg
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  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119

    Bear Pickings

    Not a lot to eat in early spring.

    Ultrascenery Oaks, Ultrascatter Frosted Bush and Flower Heads, DA Let it Snow, AM Brown Bear with Fibre Hair and Catalyzer Cubs.

    2021-01-13 19:00:31.507 Total Rendering Time: 2 hours 59.70 seconds

    Click on image for full size.

     

This discussion has been closed.