OK, Why.................?

[AnnaKirsten]

I cannot understand why, when I did today's render in a size of 1000x760 pix, my computer completely leaked all its energy?

Looking at the system requirements on the TG site, there's absolutely no logical reason for what happened. My pooter is a Penium 4, 1Gig Ram, 30Gig harddrive with nearly 17Gig free memory space.

The render settings were set for maximum results, yes, but surely my computer should have handled that ok? It finished the render, but meanwhile my control panel stopped working (I was trying to switch off the screen-saver), and then afterwards, and also next time I booted up the machine, my desktop picture had gone! I had to go into the control panel afresh and actually find the picture all over again to tell it that's what I wanted - despite the fact that it was still showing me that the picture was the one selected!

I am totally flumoxed! And of course.. No, I didn't do a backup of my harddrive before installing TG! Silly, silly me!

Any ideas? I'm a bit concerned to get some answers before I download any plugins! And I don't want to register TG in case it's just always going to give me problems, so of course, I won't be given preference for support from them either.

[bigH]

I did what you did - had no problem .
runs fine .

sorry no help .

H

[Q.R.]

I've always had this kind of problem with TG and larger renders. I keep the size down around 800x600 (which makes it impossible to downsize in PSp to get a better image) Anything over that size (especially with a lot of texture layers) and it just goes wacko. I love Tg, but it's a pain in the arse sometimes...especially when you have a really great image and the thing just freezes or shuts itself off. LOL ( I never save as I go) I won't spend the $$$ to get the registered version because of this. I can run all of my other programs without that much trouble. heck i can even run Bryce and Poser in tandem sometimes, and I have no problems. Must be something in theTG itself.

[ppetersen]

I have the registered version and a brand new comp, and on occasion the picture just freezes, the comp won't crash, but the picture won't render and the TG program goes white on me.... But I've also learned to save everything just in case. :) Don't know why it does this though. And most of my pictures are rendered at 1500 and greater. Then I downsize in PSP. :)

[Revenant]

Let's put one thing clear: while you do one TG render you cannot do nothing more than a few simple tasks: reading mail, for example, I sometimes use Photoshop, but it becomes very slow (Athlon 2400, 512 mb and Geforce4 4200).
Anything that involves continuously opening and closing windows is really not a good idea, as Terragen is memory hungry, and it is a *NORMAL* thing that the computer stops responding for a while during the rendering process. Even more if there are complex light settings and lots of water on the screen.
The perfect thing for doing TG renders is totally forget about your computer for the time it needs to render that image.
At 1000x700 it is quite strange that the computer stops responding for more than a few seconds, but it may be, depends on the size of the slice it is rendering, that the computer looks like freezed for a minute or two, at times. During this period *don't* try to force the computer to respond. It is working normally, actually, even if the task manager (I am speaking Win98, here) would assure you that Terragen is not responding.
I have used resolutions up to 4000x3000, and I assure you that (given some images at these res may take *more than two whole days* to render!) the computer may stop responding and seems totally freezed for hours and more, at times. It is normal.
Sometimes it is an aggravating fact that the computer does not respond and that the image seems to be still (no more pieces added) for a long time: it depends on the part of it the cpu is working on, and its size. Sometimes, I don't know why, the program decides to render a very big chunk of it in one single pass, even the whole sky in a single pass, at times, and well, many minutes if not hours may pass before you see a difference in the image. Moreover, if you are working on another program, and decide to get back to render window to see how your image is sorting out, the computer will seem to freeze and render window may not appear or seem totally empty until the chunk has been rendered, and the cpu responds for a little while.
This brings to one single rule, with Terragen: have faith, it will start responding when it's finished!

Not normal it is, obviously, if the program exits unexpectedly, or does other strange things to the computer, but this may depend on the configurations, or some plugins (SOpack has some problems, for example).

That's all I may add to the discussion, hope of having been of any help. I will put this answer also in the "uncle rev's terragen hints" thread, as it may interest all of the newcomers who don't know about terragen "habits"!

[AnnaKirsten]

WOW thanks, Rev! That does seem to fit in with what happened. At the time, while it was having a struggle to do this particular render (which turned out to be crap by the way!!) the screensaver had just tried to kick in, so my reaction was to immediately go and turn it off. Obviously that's what upset my pooter. I now have the screensaver off permanently as I always switch off my screen in any case when I'm away from the computer - got into the habit of doing that after the screen had an over-heated component not so long ago (it's an LCD Plasma screen).

Well that's where my laptop is obviously going to come in very handy! I always forget, I can go and do things on that while this machine is busy with a render!

I'm so glad to hear that this seems to be a normal phenomenon - although of course it would be great if that didn't happen at all!

Many thanks to all who have responded to this question, too. Nicky.

[Revenant]

You may imagine when I saw crap renders coming out of a 10 or more hours waiting my computer to finish the render!!! :rolleyes:
Then I have decided that, when I am satisfied with the preview, I render a first 400x300 render, and if I am doubtuful on any part of it, I do even a 640x480 or 800x600 if needed. This for the fact that one cannot waste tens of hours of machine time and power supply for a crap render!
:cool:
Rev

[AnnaKirsten]

Thanks for the giggle, Rev! No laughing matter at the time, though! :disbelief