| QuietlyConident | Date: Sunday, 07.09.2014, 22:32 | Message # 1 |
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Astronaut
Group: Users
United Kingdom
Messages: 54
Status: Offline
| Warning: this guide requires you to edit your Registry. Be warned that messing with the Registry can cause major issues with your computer. Undertake this at your own risk, and follow all the instructions to the letter.
So, I absolutely love the Planet Export feature in Space Engine. It's one of my favourite features, in fact. However, a major issue that I found was that the maximum size of the exported texture was only 4096 pixels; which is pretty small. Anything higher than this and your video card and Space Engine would invariably crash.
After poking around the internet, I discovered that this crash usually isn't a "real" crash, but Windows rebooting your graphics card because it thinks it's crashed. Rendering textures larger than 4096 take up a heck of a lot of graphics card processing power, and Windows has a built in tool called Timeout Detection and Recovery which attempts to recover what it thinks is a frozen graphics card. You can read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff570087.aspx
So how do we disable Timeout Detection and Recovery? Firstly, we're going to have to make sure that your graphics card can actually handle textures larger than 4096. If it can't, then unfortunately, this fix wont work for you and your graphics card will properly crash when you try to render a texture.
Luckily there is an easy way to find out the maximum texture.
Head to your Space Engine installation folder. This is usually on the C: drive of your Computer, in a folder called Games. Can't find it? Right click on your Space Engine shortcut, click Properties, and in the Target is the folder path you want to find.
In the folder marked SpaceEngine 0.971, go to the System folder, and then open up the file se.log in Notepad or another text editing application.
This log file shows you some important bits of information. Scroll down a few lines until you get to the entry Max texture size:. The numbers after this entry tell you how big of a texture your graphics card can process. Mine is 16384.
BE AWARE that usually you won't be able to export a texture this large even if you disable Timeout Detection and Recovery. I can only export a texture of around 12,000 pixels before my graphics card crashes for real. But still, this is a heck of a lot better than 4096.
If your graphics card can handle larger textures then great, onto the fun bit.
On Windows 7 click the Start Menu, click Run..., and type in Regedit and press Ok. On Windows 8, go to the Start Screen and type in Regedit. Under the Apps listing, click on Regedit. Usually User Account Control will warn you "Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?". Click Yes.
You'll be presented with the Registry Editor. The left pane has a list of folders that are expandable just like in Windows Explorer. Your going to want to find the folder called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and expand it by double clicking or clicking on the small arrow to the left. Then scroll down to the folder SYSTEM. Expand it. Scroll down to CurrentControlSet, and expand it. Then expand the Control folder, then finally the GraphicsDrivers folder.
So that's: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > GraphicsDrivers.
In this folder, in the right pane, you should see a number of entries.
Do you have an entry named TdrLevel, with a Type called REG_DWORD? If you do, right click on TdrLevel and select Modify.... In the new window, you're going to want to change the Value data: entry to 0 and click Ok.
If you don't have this entry, don't worry. In the Registry Editor window, go up to the menu bar and press Edit, then New..., then click on DWORD (32-bit) Value. A new entry will appear in the right hand pane. Name it TdrLevel. Make sure the Data column shows an entry of 0x00000000 (0). If it doesn't, go through the steps in the last paragraph.
That's it! You've now disabled the Timeout Detection and Recovery feature. You will NEED TO RESTART your computer for the settings to take effect.
Once your computer has restarted, open up Space Engine, and you now should be able to export textures that are higher than 4096!
Remember, to export a texture; select a planet, press Esc, go to Editor, then click Export Planet. The number in the Resolution will be how large the exported texture can be. Remember not to go above the number specified in the Max texture size in the se.log file we looked at earlier, or your graphics card will definitely crash. And like I said, you probably wont able to export up to your max anyway. See how high you can get. I can get export textures over 12,000 pixels in size, but anything over 13,000 will crash my graphics card, even though my Max texture size is 16384.
Exporting large texture WILL TAKE A LONG TIME. It's best to close any and all other programmes before you do this. When I export textures .png's that are 12,000 pixels in size, my computer grinds to a halt and it takes a good five minutes to process before its finished. Be patient.
You can find all exported textures in your Space Engine folder (the folder we found earlier). They're in the aptly named export folder. Be aware that any new texture exports will erase any previous exported textures in that folder, so always remember to copy the files to somewhere else on your computer before exports.
That's it for this guide: I hope it's useful! 
Edited by QuietlyConident - Sunday, 07.09.2014, 22:43 |
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| The_White_Guardian | Date: Sunday, 16.08.2015, 10:51 | Message # 2 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
Netherlands
Messages: 7
Status: Offline
| Anyone know how to do this on Windows 10? I tried it, didn't work while it worked on Windows 8.1 
EDIT
WTF. Just WTF. I restarted my computer and tried to export a 4K texture once again, and again the TDR interrupted SE.
I restarted up to three times, and suddenly IT WORKS. After my computer installed some update and took quite a while to restart, it works and I can once again export 4K textures or even larger ones. Thank you so much for this guide!
Edited by The_White_Guardian - Sunday, 16.08.2015, 11:11 |
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| QuietlyConident | Date: Monday, 17.08.2015, 20:54 | Message # 3 |
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Astronaut
Group: Users
United Kingdom
Messages: 54
Status: Offline
| Glad it helped!
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ENG
New site
United Kingdom 
Netherlands