Office block

[greg04]

here is something i am working on right now, just a small office block.
Originally built in Microstation/not by me/ but i had to rebuild it in some parts in viz.
Rendered in RC3 with high settings, for the main view, yet there are many things that went wrong, a lot of noise.
QMC subdiv60
Light cache 2000
vraysky
vray cam
etc
main image





any comments on how to make it less noisy will be very appreciated

Greg

[sv]

looks nice;
so your using QMC for primary & Light Cache for secondary?
60 subdivs does sound about right - i find this is a good target for (almost) grainless images.

What AA settings are you using? Try Adaptive Subdivision if your currently using QMC...

I tend to put the Global subdivs Multiplier to 4, with Subdivs on about 15 - 16 to reach that QMC level of 60 - i used to think this affected materials as well, but i'm not sure about this anymore.....perhaps someone could put me straight on this.

Otheriwse, check your material subdivs aren't low, and increase if necessary, and finally make sure that the Noise threshold is at a reasonably small level - 0.01 or less.....

Otherwise switch to Irradiance Map for primary, this should get rid of noise....

[greg04]

QMC and LC
AA I usually have set at adptiveQMC 1-4 / for some of those pics i used Catmull_Rom filter -I don't know why! /
rQMC sampler I leave alone, i should play around with these more often.
material subdiv i usually have set at 8 to 15, which seems to work most of the time.
I assumed some of the errors came from the Microstation/dwg geometry import.
thanks SV

[sv]

Adaptive Sudivision for the AA will produce much less grainy images, but will take longer to render, and will take more memory.....

the default settings for the rQMC sampler work well for most circumstances, but for test renders speed is greatly improved by increasing the threshold - values of 0.1 or 0.5 or whatever, will render very quickly, but with a lot of noise. Just make sure to reduce this (if necessary) for final renders to reduce noise. You could also try ticking 'Use Light Cache for glossy rays' and make sure you use a filter that interpolates between the samples - this would reduce the amount of noise and render quicker, but do make sure you have enough Light Cache samples - 2000 in your case should be fine.

Material samples should be fine at 8, but it might be the case that you have to increase one particular material to be a lot higher, especially if using QMC AA....

I particuarly like the close up shots, look really good + the VraySky is balanced really well.... where is it?

Also, the highlights you've circled that have poor Anti-ailising are specular highlights. The values are high range (i.e. about 1.0 float) and your AA filter your using is having trouble blending between the high range colours and the lower range colours. You could change your AA filter to something like Soften or Video, which will add a slight blur and should remove this sharp Ailised edge.....

Joconnell has written some good stuff on this:

http://www.joconnell.com/view.php?category=3d&view=28

I don't really see any errors in the model, the Microstation/dwg import looks ok - typical erros would be flipped normals, or co-planar faces, but i can't see any in the images. They look really good, just one or two materials are a bit grainy but i recogn Adaptive Subdivision would go some way to sorting this + using Light Cache for glossy rays....