The best Anti-Aliasing for v-ray renderings

[flipside]

[deleted nonsense...]


My settings are almost always these:
AQMC min/max=1/4, clr th linked to QMC sampler
QMC sampler: noise th=0.01 and the rest default.
And material subdivs, area light subdivs etc always higher than default.



I just did some tests on glossy reflections and AA.

Tried these settings:

noise=0.01 and min/max=1/4
Variable subdivs for the material:
4:15.2s
8:19.8s
16:27.5s
24:34.2s
32:41.5s
(noise levels in the image: good from 16 subs)

min/max=1/4 and material subs=8
variable noise th
0.05: 5.4s
0.02: 13.6s
0.01:19.8s
0.005:21.0s
0.001:22.5s
(noise levels in the image: all crappy)

min/max=1/4 and material subs=16
variable noise th
0.05: 5.4s
0.02: 12.9s
0.01:27.6s
0.005:51.8s
0.001:53.0s
(noise levels in the image: good from 0.01 and lower, but all exactly the same, so no improvement from 0.01 to 0.001)

material subs=8 and noise=0.01
min/max variable
1/4:20.0s
1/8:39.6s
1/16:50.0s
1/32:52.6s
(noise levels in the image: good for 16 and 32 and looking exactly the same)

material subs=8 and noise=0.002
min/max variable
1/4:22.2s
1/8:58.3s
1/16:208.4s
1/32:333.6s
(noise levels in the image: good for 16 and 32, but rendertimes are way off...)


From the best images (bold ones), the best image is the one with min/max=1/32, noise=0.002 and 8 subdivs of course, but rendertime is super high.
All of the other images where material subdivs=8, have the worst quality.
The second best quality is found in the image with noise=0.01, min/max=1/4 and subdivs=32. I also did a test with noise=0.005, min/max=1/4 and subdivs=32. Rendertime doubled (88s) and now it is nearly identical to the best image (333s...)

Here are these images:
01)noise=0.002, min/max=1/32 and subdivs=8 (333s)


02)noise=0.005, min/max=1/4 and subdivs=32 (88s)



03)noise=0.01, min/max=1/4 and subdivs=32 (41.5s)




Of course this only tests glossies and not fine detail for example in your scene. But since your question originally was about the glossies, this is a good test. You can do similar tests on a fine detail scene only (for example with a white non reflective material) and see what gives you good enough results. Then combine it with the previous test and choose the best quality vs speed settings.

What you can also see is that when using default min/max rate and default material subdivs, the noise treshold below 0.01 doesn't make much of a difference.

So my conclusion is that if you want fast rendertimes and good glossies, you have to increase the material subdivs instead of going crazy on the min/max rate and noise treshold.

[nvanherpt]

i found this helpful:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/V...e_sampling.pdf

[ene.xis]

flipside:
Though ur test seem pretty damn exaustive imo the quality of the glossys in an non studio set will be directly connected to the environment it self and its lighting quality. Therefore an interior arch viz shot is a completelly diferent story, me thinks...
i will try to post some of my own tests when i get 15 min!

[flipside]

Yeah could be... But usually if you have a problem like this, it's not a bad idea to do some small test where only one thing changes at a time instead of trying a bunch of settings at once. It's also best if you want to test AA that you leave out the GI calculations etc out of your test as this will be affected too when for example changing the QMC noise treshold.

Some years ago when I still had loads of time, I did a lot of these tests on every vray setting, creating graphs out of it, that was very very usefull!! Then you see how each value behaves, you would be surprised how some of these curves looked like, rendertimes going sky high once you passed a certain value or sometimes no effect at all in a range of values etc...

For the few interiors that I have done already, I usually got away with the settings from my previous post (increasing the material subdivs instead of all the rest). For animation it's different of course, but also there if you only see the noise when viewing it frame by frame, why bother increasing quality. For example this animation:
http://www.aversis.be/3dviz_portfolio/23.htm
Look at the render at the bottom, very noisy, but nobody complained as you didn't see that noise when the animation played (also not in the high res version, the one on my site is very low quality )

I'm sure this is different for every scene and client... But these settings are so critical and I see many posts with people using some very high quality values that I'm sure in many cases you could just alter one setting which can cut rendertimes in half without losing quality in the image.

[ene.xis]

I'm sure this is different for every scene and client... But these settings are so critical and I see many posts with people using some very high quality values that I'm sure in many cases you could just alter one setting which can cut rendertimes in half without losing quality in the image.

quoted for agreement!
and i do remember your graphs pretty well!very usefull stuff bu the way!


nevertheless i feel quite usefull to tweak either aa and gi quality with just a few clicks, instead of tweaking through materials and lights subdivisions...but that s just me!

[flipside]

yeah don't get me wrong, i do the same thing with these global controls! The QMC rollout should be your best friend

Only when everything is good except some glossies here and there (like in Ramy02's chair and table example), I will change it locally instead of for example using lower noise treshold as this will increase quality in other areas too (areas which were already good).

[ene.xis]

[Morbid Angel]

what I may add about that pdf, is that the approach taken there only works for still imagery. Unfortinantly rendering animations with objects moving, motion blur, etc will require an even more sampling. At this moment after some exhaustive research we found that 1/12 at 0.003 does the job.
I will try the 3/6 method and see.

[percydaman]

thanks for the info morbid!

[R_Cyph]

No worries.
Here is why: Im not sure how things work in arch viz, so I cant really say for sure. However, often in film we run into situations where there is so much happening on screen, and often in dark scenes (night settings) where the only bright parts are reflections, that gets to be a trouble.
Trust me when I say that, I have done some extensive testing.
And in some specific cases, these are the mesures we have to resort to. I would love for sampling to be low, and render times mega fast. But for us often thats not the case.
About production times, priad, yes and no. At the moment we are working on series, where a show delivers ever 2/3 weeks. And often we end up rendering 10,000 to 50,000 frames.
Another note is that, vray in maya is a bit diferent from vray in max. So sampling wise (though Im not too sure) in max vray solves better sampling then in maya. This is to be tested though so dont quote me on it.

Any chance you could post a few screens of animation with lowish AA settings and then screens of the final and the settings you had to resort to? Id love to see the difference you animation gurus keep talking about. Also, does ur studio work in unclamped 32bit? I could see why you need such high sampling if that was the case.

[m_hinks]

I will try the 3/6 method and see.

Did this test ever get done? I would be interested if your test prove that increasing the min helps. Im presuming you leave the material and DMC min samples at default and control all the noise/quality in the AA, as per the Universal settings and cpnichols tutorials?

[Morbid Angel]

Any chance you could post a few screens of animation with lowish AA settings and then screens of the final and the settings you had to resort to? Id love to see the difference you animation gurus keep talking about. Also, does ur studio work in unclamped 32bit? I could see why you need such high sampling if that was the case.

I'll see what I can do. Yes we mostly work with 32 bit, and this is where the problem happens. I think now its better in new vray you can set a clamp level option, which can dramatically resolve the flickering of the highlites.
From my conversations with vlado, the toughest problem is to create a solid aliased highlite in a multiple low lever glossy reflections; that is when an object is reflected back in itself several times

Did this test ever get done? I would be interested if your test prove that increasing the min helps. Im presuming you leave the material and DMC min samples at default and control all the noise/quality in the AA, as per the Universal settings and cpnichols tutorials?

Yes, I can conclude that lower levels of AA work if you have clamping turned on. But if you must have float, higher sampling must be performed.

[duke2]

Yes, I can conclude that lower levels of AA work if you have clamping turned on. But if you must have float, higher sampling must be performed.

So if you're fairly happy with the result you get straight out of VRay, and can turn clamping on, you can go right ahead and not use 1,12 sampling?

[Morbid Angel]

clamping will set all values at <1. If you are doing low end work this is ok. For film though it has to be float.

[R_Cyph]

what I may add about that pdf, is that the approach taken there only works for still imagery. Unfortinantly rendering animations with objects moving, motion blur, etc will require an even more sampling. At this moment after some exhaustive research we found that 1/12 at 0.003 does the job.
I will try the 3/6 method and see.

what resolution do you typically work at with these rendering settings?