Time for me to buy Pro Version

[Sig]

Fletch,

I believe I have made a decision to buy Twilight 2 Pro version. I have had good success using your helpful tips. As I have mentioned in the past I mainly render exteriors. I have been using 08 Exterior Daytime Progressive. I am rendering at 6000 x 2540. Bump maps for rough stone and rocks are looking good. Glass is rendering nicely with realistic reflections, water is looking good but may need a little more experimentation. About the only thing that looks bad is grass. I used a mottled progressive bump. It sort of looks like heavy painted green stucco. I will probably go ahead and also purchase Scatter from Thomas. He was kind enough to extend my trial for another 15 days while I was trying about every render I could find. I was able to try it in twilight Hobby a little as full component object but it is a huge memory hog that way. At least I know it will work.

I just have a couple questions. None will be a deal breaker. Of all the renderers I have tried, Twilight 2 seems to be the best choice for me at its price point.

Question 1. How many passes when rendering Progressive at (8 threads) do you feel is enough? I'm at 165/10000 on a current model There is no grain, all edges are very smooth, nice soft shadows, etc. For the most part, It appears to be done. Question 2. Are there any plans for future Twilight upgrades or further development. If so, in what areas?

PS. I have been brushing off my photoshop skills. It looks like even the most high end renders still need a fair amount of post production tweaking for very realistic visualizations and most FX effects.

Thanks,

Jim

[Fletch]

Hello Jim,

Even professional photographers use post-pro on their photos, there's no escaping photo enhancement for a professional polish. There's no shame in it. It's just part of the work-flow.

I use Skatter grass for my renderings. Search it here on our forum for our tutorial. Works great. Only use Easy 08 or 09 render settings when using Skatter.

On an 8 thread/4 core machine (intel corei7), 60 passes for Easy 08 renderings has always been good enough for my clients. I may use a photoshop plugin called Topaz Denoise 6 when I'm in a hurry and can't wait for the rendering to clear up any more. Topaz helps me knock several hours off of renderings. Search it here on the forum, I reviewed several denoise plugins.

On a 4 core/4 thread machine (intel corei5), 120 passes will look similar to 60 passes with 8 threads.
On a 2 core machine, 240 passes will be required, and so-forth.

For interiors, Easy 09 is recommended for final render quality, and with corei7 when the image is "good enough" for you, then, it's done. A denoise filter in photoshop will help a lot. Depending on image resolution (I render mostly in HD 1080p these days) it should be client-ready in 2 hours... but of course every scene is different.

Twilight Render is currently under heavy development. In the next version we will have displacement and sun/pool caustics plus many new render passes. Dates/timelines can not be discussed, but it will not be released terribly soon.

[SiWalder]

Hi - Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this question, and another sorry as I expect you get asked this question A LOT.

I was wondering if there was a very rough ETA for displacement map support. I purchased a Pro Licence very recently and really enjoy the software as it is, but I can see a time in the future where I will need to use displacement maps for certain textures.