ULTIMATE Grass & Meadow Worldbuilder & Animated Add-on [Commercial]

13

Comments

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    edited May 2018

    I bought this product and I have a couple of questions.

    1) Is there a way to reduce render times? I loaded the sunset hills scene and a single figure and it ran for over 2 and a half hours and it still came out grainy. Am I doing something wrong? I rarely have renders take more than an hour and a half, even with larger scenes.

    2) Is there a way to decrease the light intensity? I had to turn the translucency of my figure down to 12% and even then she lit up like a light bulb on her hands and ears. I like to have some translucency in my figures to give it some realism, but the light seams to be super duper intense and reactive to translucency. Can that be reduced somehow?

    Hi Divamakeup,

    It sounds like something is wrong somewhere. Can you tell me what your computer specs are? And what GPU driver are you using at the moment? If you have a decent GPU, two hours should be more than enough time to produce a nice render. My guess is there might be a driver issue. I know certain older drivers have difficulty rendering overlaping geomtry, for example. Whenever there is too much overlapping geometry in a scene, Iray feels like molasses, and slows down to a crawl. 

    As for the light intensity, you'll have to manually decrease the lumens on the "SUN" light in the scene. I have no preset to do this, so you just need to adjust the slider down in the parameters for the light.

    -P

    I have nvidia gtx 970. I just updated my driver about a week and a half ago.

    I did a test render of just the field with nothing else loaded into it - and reduced the size to 1200x800 first. It still took nearly an hour (55 minutes) just to render the field with nothing else (click to enlarge):

    Is that just par for the course for products like this? 

    It's really pretty - I really like the field. I just hope there is some way to reduce the render time. :) Unless that kind of render time is pretty normal for a product like this?

    Post edited by 3Diva on
  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,755

    Diva, thanks for posting your results. I wondered about the hype and wanted to see some user input before purchasing. I may still pick it up as it looks amazing, but I have the same card as you and for the majority of users something like this will only serve as a backdrop for an actual scene which will more than double the resources used.  An hour isn't too bad based on my experiences with lots of instancing, but I am curious how it goes when you add a couple of fully clothed figures and a vehicle or two to the scene

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019

    @Divamakeup , in the render settings, is there any difference if you use "Optimized for Memory" rather than "Optimized for Speed"? I know from experience with a different product that used instances that the Memory setting often helps with the speed problem when you have lots of instances.

  • fastbike1fastbike1 Posts: 4,078

     Thanks, that link worked.

    MelanieL said:
    fastbike1 said:

    I get a "forbidden" Message when I try to download the product pdf from http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/52497/start

    Anyone else having this problem. I'd like to see what the recommended scatter plugin is before I checkout.

    I do note that the Daz3d Docuementation Center is really slow and occasionally throwing a 503 error.

    Looks like the ReadMe hasn't been set up correctly, I've seen this before for other products - try this link: http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/52497/52497_ultimategrassmeadowworldbuilder.pdf

     

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550

    Diva, thanks for posting your results. I wondered about the hype and wanted to see some user input before purchasing. I may still pick it up as it looks amazing, but I have the same card as you and for the majority of users something like this will only serve as a backdrop for an actual scene which will more than double the resources used.  An hour isn't too bad based on my experiences with lots of instancing, but I am curious how it goes when you add a couple of fully clothed figures and a vehicle or two to the scene

    My render time is probably pretty normal for really large scenes like this (I'm just not used to rendering them). :) Heck, it might even be faster than normal for such a big scene, for all I know. lol 

    The scenes are really beautiful so I am pretty excited about the product. I probably just need to learn some patience. lol

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    BeeMKay said:

    @Divamakeup , in the render settings, is there any difference if you use "Optimized for Memory" rather than "Optimized for Speed"? I know from experience with a different product that used instances that the Memory setting often helps with the speed problem when you have lots of instances.

    Thank you! :) I'll try that! 

  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited May 2018
    I did a test render of just the field with nothing else loaded into it - and reduced the size to 1200x800 first. It still took nearly an hour (55 minutes) just to render the field with nothing else (click to enlarge):

    How many iterations/samples did you render out to? It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to render an image that of that resolution (to an acceptable level). I wonder if your GPU is switching over to CPU-only maybe.

    -P

    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • Here are a few test renders I just did, same resolution as yours;

    1. 100 iterations: 1 min.
    2. 300 iterations: 1 min., 45 sec.
    3. 1000 iterations: 4 min., 40 sec.  
    100 iterations.jpg
    1200 x 800 - 574K
    300 iterations.jpg
    1200 x 800 - 566K
    1000 iterations.jpg
    1200 x 800 - 545K
  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    I did a test render of just the field with nothing else loaded into it - and reduced the size to 1200x800 first. It still took nearly an hour (55 minutes) just to render the field with nothing else (click to enlarge):

    How many iterations/samples did you render out to? It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to render an image that of that resolution (to an acceptable level).

    -P

    I'm not sure - I just used the settings your scene came with. The only thing I changed was the render image size.

  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited May 2018

     

    I'm not sure - I just used the settings your scene came with. The only thing I changed was the render image size.

    This is likely part of the reason. The pre-built scenes are set at the default of 5,000 samples, which is overkill. Most of the grain is gone by about 500 samples or so. For my promos, I don't think I rendered out past 1,000-2,000.

    Also, be sure Opti-X accelration is turned on.

    Also, what driver version did you recently update to? To check;

    • Go to Control Panel > System > Device Manager, then click on "Display Adapters" and right-click "Properties" and "Driver" to see your driver version. For reference, mine is 22.21.13.8528 8/9/2017.

    -P

    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    edited May 2018

    It says my driver version is: 23.21.13.9135 3/23/2018

    I guess I updated longer ago than I remembered.

    I'm not sure what you mean by "iterations", if you mean "max samples" then I went ahead and played with that setting to see if I can get faster render times. I took your advice and tried it at 1000 max samples. It really decreased render time.

    Max Samples 1000 - Render Time 14 minutes and 15 seconds:

     

    I tried clicking the OptiX Prime Acceleration but it actually increased the render time to 19 minutes and 48 seconds:

     

    So I tried adding a female figure to the scene (and unchecked OptiX). It rendered in 16 minutes and 13 seconds with a figure in the scene. However while the field looks pretty good at 1000 max samples, the figure in the scene looked a bit too grainy for my taste.

    So I tried clearing out all the terrain in the scene except the rock (which she was sitting on) and then rendered just her and the rock at a higher setting (5000 max samples). The figure and the rock rendered in 4 minutes. I then combined the 1000 max sample render with the 5000 max sample figure render in photoshop. It took less than 3 minutes in photoshop to combine the two (probably less than 2 minutes actually, it's super fast and easy). 

    So the resulting render took about 19 minutes of combined render time and less than 3 minutes in Photoshop:

    So not too bad at all, time wise.

    I'll see if I can play with it some more and see if there are other ways to get the figure and the field to render together along with quick render times like above. I might try a compromise of more than 1000 max samples - but perhaps less than 5000 - and see if that helps. I really like these fields and scenes - they're quite lovely. Nicely done on this great product! :) I might just keep rendering the figure and field separate but I'll be sure to keep playing with the settings and try to work out a nice balance of render time with render quality. :)

     

     

    Post edited by 3Diva on
  • Ralf1958Ralf1958 Posts: 688

    Thank you so much for this product! I was waiting for something like this. I own all possible grass packs but none of them is nearly compareble to this awesome pack! All combinations just look fantastic!

     

    Ultimate Grass 01.png
    1500 x 1000 - 2M
    Ultimate Grass 02.png
    1500 x 1000 - 2M
    Ultimate Grass 03.png
    1500 x 1000 - 2M
  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    edited May 2018

    Here I tried the "MM Gentle Flat, Misty Early Morning" scene. 

    Max Samples decreased to 1000, but Rendering Converged Ratio increased to 98%. Render time 18 minutes, 44 seconds. (Click for Full Size)

    I like how this one turned out! :) I might have to see if I can increase the SubD of the foreground grass.

    I'm really liking this product though! FINALLY, I can make some nice outdoor scenes without trying to put up walls and fences to mask the fact that the set I'm using is small and there's nothing beyond. lol Now I can have these beautiful grass fields beyond! 

    Post edited by 3Diva on
  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited May 2018

    Here I tried the "MM Gentle Flat, Misty Early Morning" scene. 

    Max Samples decreased to 1000, but Rendering Converged Ratio increased to 98%. Render time 18 minutes, 44 seconds. (Click for Full Size)

    I like how this one turned out! :) I might have to see if I can increase the SubD of the foreground grass.

    I'm really liking this product though! FINALLY, I can make some nice outdoor scenes without trying to put up walls and fences to mask the fact that the set I'm using is small and there's nothing beyond. lol Now I can have these beautiful grass fields beyond! 

    Nice, yeah 14 minutes seems much more reasonable. Glad its working better for you now. And, great work with this render!

    (as for subD, you can turn it on for any of the grass patches. It shouldn't slow down things too much).

     

    Ralf1958 said:

    Thank you so much for this product! I was waiting for something like this. I own all possible grass packs but none of them is nearly compareble to this awesome pack! All combinations just look fantastic!

     

    Nice work!

    -P

    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019

    Short update... The grass and presets work fine in DS 4.8.

    Also, using "Optimised for" should be set to memory, rather than speed. When I started the render using the speed optimization, after more than 5 minutes, the render hadn't started yet. With the memory optimization, the render took off within the regular time.

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    BeeMKay said:

    Short update... The grass and presets work fine in DS 4.8.

    Also, using "Optimised for" should be set to memory, rather than speed. When I started the render using the speed optimization, after more than 5 minutes, the render hadn't started yet. With the memory optimization, the render took off within the regular time.

    Yeah, I played around with that setting based on your advice and the "memory" setting definitely does better than "speed" (which seems odd to me, you'd think the speed setting would be faster lol). I think the scenes I tried so far had it set to Memory as a default.

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,983
    edited May 2018

    11 minutes for a 3200x1800 render using one of the supplied HDRIs:

    image

    Grasslands.jpg
    3200 x 1800 - 2M
    Post edited by Chohole on
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019
    edited May 2018

    Here's my first finished render:

    I removed the stone, and converted the grass of the center to subdivision. This is SubDiv level 1, which makes the grass look smoother.

    Render time 37 minutes for 500 iterations (GTX 980 Ti), original image size 2600x1950.

    centaurgrasshill.jpg
    1500 x 1125 - 713K
    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    edited May 2018

    This one took about 15 minutes to render.

    ANGEL RESTING GRASS TERRAIN 2 LOGO.jpg
    1500 x 1000 - 1M
    Post edited by IceDragonArt on
  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550

    This one took about 15 minutes to render.

    Beautiful work! And super fast! Do you mind sharing your settings?

     

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    This one took about 15 minutes to render.

    Beautiful work! And super fast! Do you mind sharing your settings?

     

    Thank you!  I will have to look and see which preset this is, but its just the preset, rotated a tiny bit to put the sun behind the wings and that's pretty much it.  I did end up lightening up her face and hair in photoshop and also got rid of a bit of grass pokethru on her body.  But settting wise, I did almost nothing. I will check tomorrow when I get back on my PC.

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550

    This one took about 15 minutes to render.

    Beautiful work! And super fast! Do you mind sharing your settings?

     

    Thank you!  I will have to look and see which preset this is, but its just the preset, rotated a tiny bit to put the sun behind the wings and that's pretty much it.  I did end up lightening up her face and hair in photoshop and also got rid of a bit of grass pokethru on her body.  But settting wise, I did almost nothing. I will check tomorrow when I get back on my PC.

    Thank you. :) 

    It looks like it might be the Sunset scene. That scene actually renders the slowest for me. The fact that your image rendered in 15 minutes is crazy fast. I'm definitely jealous! :)

  • jaebeajaebea Posts: 454

    Unlike you all, I bought this for the animation but can't get it to work.  Could someone with animate2 attempt an animation with one of the small parts and the corresponding aniblock please?  I re-tested the butterflies and dandelions from the other packs and they are working fine.  I have messaged Philosopher on Vimeo to see if he can help.

    Thanks!!

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,550
    edited May 2018

    Ok so I've been playing with this for the past couple of days and trying different scenes and different settings combinations. What I've realized is that some of the scenes are a bit hard on my computer and render slow, but other scenes render really quickly. So I tried to figure out the difference in the scenes that render quickly and the ones my computer struggle with and found that just deleting the lighting from a scene and trying a different lighting setting sometimes made a HUGE difference in render times depending on which lighting I used.

    So after much testing I found out that some of the lighting presets render really quickly while others tend to really slow down the render. 

    After testing the different lighting on the same field scene I narrowed it down to which lighting setups were making my computer struggle and which ones my computer have no problem with. I then set up a new scene with my own HDR, loaded a single figure (Aiko 8) with hair and bikini, and used the scene as a test scene to just test the lighting by just loading the individual lighting sets, rendering, then deleting the lighting and loading the next lighting set, etc. The results where what I expected based on the testing I did with the grass field and changing the lights only. 

    Here's a break down of the render times with the test scene with the different lighting sets. I'll list them from longest render times to fastest render times:

    "Lights - Sunset", Render Time 12 minutes 21 seconds:

    "Lights - Midday Early Afternoon", Render Time 9 minutes 40 seconds:

    "Lights - Midday Midmorning", Render Time 7 minutes 11 seconds:

    "Lights - Midday Overhead", Render Time 6 minutes 28 seconds:

    "Lights - Misty Morning", Render Time 4 minutes 19 seconds

    "Lights - Misty Early Morning", Render Time 1 minute 38 seconds:

    "Lights - Overcast", Render Time 1 minute 24 seconds:

    So if you're like me and you find that some of the scenes are slow to render, you might just try changing the lighting - as it can make a HUGE difference. From 12 minutes and 21 seconds to 1 minute and 24 seconds just by changing the lighting set. These are the same type of results I was getting by just changing the light with the grass field as well. So I think I'll be sticking to the "Overcast", "Misty Early Morning", and "Misty Morning" lighting. And just switch out the lighting to one of those if I use any of the other scenes.

    I was getting a bit confused as to why some of the scenes where rendering super fast while others just seemed to take ages - so I'm really glad I discovered this. I'm not sure if it's helpful to others, but thought I'd post my findings in case someone else might be struggling with some of the scenes as well.

    This "discovery" might be a no-brainer to some, but it was a big help to me as I can now enjoy the product without struggling with longish render times. My computer is a couple of years old and not exactly 'top of the line'. The product is quite impressive and now that I know the way to go with the lighting I'm super excited about creating more scenes with these gorgeous fields! 

    Post edited by 3Diva on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,473
    edited May 2018

    Thanks for posting your results, Diva.

    I do not like, when rendering takes enormous amount of time, so I was prepared to give up on this item.

    Will have to test the grass, I have for Unity 3D, if it give similar renders.

    Otherwise, will reconsider this item.

     

    Post edited by Artini on
  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited May 2018
    jaebea said:

    Unlike you all, I bought this for the animation but can't get it to work.  Could someone with animate2 attempt an animation with one of the small parts and the corresponding aniblock please?  I re-tested the butterflies and dandelions from the other packs and they are working fine.  I have messaged Philosopher on Vimeo to see if he can help.

    Thanks!!

    @jaebea

    Strange. I just did some testing to see if I can replicate this issue---though was not able to.  Was the add-on installed also using DIM and to the same root folder?

    I would first check to make sure that your aniBlocks folder contains all the necessary files, as shown in the attached image.

    Also, check the "data" folder to verify that the morphs exist (see image below). The attached image shows where the morphs are located for the Meadow Grass, as an example.

     

    -P

    Ultimate Grass and Meadow aniblocks.jpg
    1014 x 861 - 208K
    Untitled-1.jpg
    1429 x 1375 - 1M
    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • ACueACue Posts: 114
    edited May 2018

    I  was anxious to try this new product, given that I have a really basic rig,  running a GT 740M card with 16GB of memory.  But I was pleasantly surprized at how it makes clever use of instancing to generate realistic grasses and terrains without crashing my computer. In my case, having at least 16GB of memory made the difference.  I admit my resources are taxed nearly to the max, if I have memory-intensive figures or objects in the scene, like one of AM's Iray squirrels, for example, but I'm impressed with what one can achieve with relatively modest resources. FYI - this scene took about 30 minutes to render at 5000 iterations, with instancing optimization set to memory,. Looking froward to more experimentation. I expect my scenes will render lightning fast when I upgrade my system last this summer. 

    village.jpg
    1650 x 894 - 1013K
    Post edited by ACue on
  • ACue said:

    I  was anxious to try this new product, given that I have a really basic rig,  running a GT 740M card with 16GB of memory.  But I was pleasantly surprized at how it makes clever use of instancing to generate realistic grasses and terrains without crashing my computer. In my case, having at least 16GB of memory made the difference.  I admit my resources are taxed nearly to the max, if I have memory-intensive figures or objects in the scene, like one of AM's Iray squirrels, for example, but I'm impressed with what one can achieve with relatively modest resources. FYI - this scene took about 30 minutes to render at 5000 iterations, with instancing optimization set to memory,. Looking froward to more experimentation. I expect my scenes will render lightning fast when I upgrade my system last this summer. 

    Nice work, good to know your GT 740M handles it ok. Thanks for posting!

    -P

  • FirstBastionFirstBastion Posts: 7,764

    A couple billion polies will take some calculations to render. 

    I added a few of these promos to the Art of the Promo thread.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/26232/art-of-the-promo#latest

  • A couple billion polies will take some calculations to render. 

    I added a few of these promos to the Art of the Promo thread.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/26232/art-of-the-promo#latest

    Thanks for the mention FirstBation. And nice thread----so much good talent there.

    -P

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