Posted on May 14, 2012

I was very pleased to read your comments on Atoll but I also felt bad for my multiscreen users.

They knew, correctly, that I wasn’t going to tie up Bucephalus for another 3 weeks to produce a 7680 x 1600 version. However, as I was working to produce a high res version of “Blue Christmas” (for my longtime partners at Art in Design) I stumbled across a possible reason for the astronomical rendering times.

I discovered that if I use standard terrain meshes instead of “procedural” terrains the render times went way down. I bit the bullet and tore down my “Atoll” scene and rebuilt it using the standard terrains. Lo and behold, the new version rendered in under 14 hours!

I’ve added the new version of “Atoll” to the Members Gallery this morning. The water should be less grainy and I’ve made it a bit more transperent to show a bit more of the corals I had placed there. I’ve also brightened the gas giant a bit and tweaked the lighting on the planets a bit. You can still find the original version in the Pickle Jar for comparison.

I hope you like the new version. I am going to get cracking on the multiscreen (and perhaps a night version) right away!