What is the highest quality AA method?

[loafer87gt]

I am having a problem with a scene I am working with. I have used displacement mapping for the siding of the building, and am finding that using the default adaptive AA settings (-1 / 4) random areas of the vertical siding dissapear. Forcing 4X fixed AA draws the lines, but I get a very bad moire effect with the displaced objects in the distance. The best results I have been able to achieve so far is using adaptive using 3 / 4 settings, but I still get muddy looking areas for objects in the background.

What sort of AA do you folks recommend for highest quality AA on fine details?

Thanks in advance, and have a great weekend!

[flipside]

Hi,

did you use adaptive QMC AA or adaptive subdivision AA?

I would suggest the following settings:
image sampler rollout:
adaptive QMC with min/max=1/4
The AA (and other QMC related stuff) is then controlled by the QMC sampler rollout:
use default settings, or try even lower noise threshold like 0.002 or 0.001 (default is 0.005)

For moire patterns, the AA filter you choose can also help a great deal. Do some tests with mitchel-netravali, soften with size=2.5 or cubic.

An image of the problem area can also help us better to understand what's going on.

wouter

[flipside]

Oh yeah, about the 'highest quality method', that depends on how your scene looks like. They can all produce the same quality, but rendertimes will probably vary a lot.

If you have lots of glossies, small fine textures or displacement (like displaced grass), area shadows etc... I would suggest adaptive QMC AA.

If you have large areas without much detail (like huge white walls etc), use adaptive subdivision AA.

Note that with adaptive subdivision, you can get away with lower subdivs for glossy effects (3-. With adaptive QMC, you need to use values between 15 and 40 to get rid of the noise.

[loafer87gt]

Thanks Flipside! I'll give your suggestions a try and see if they help.

Cheers!

[loafer87gt]

After rendering away for four hours I am pleased to report that your suggestion worked. I ended up using adaptive subdivision with the demoiring / ring remover filter. I tried the adaptive QMC but for some reason no matter what min / man subdivisions I used I ended up with a strange speckled noise pattern over my displaced areas.

Anyways - thanks again for your reply.

BTW - I SOOOOO love this renderer.

[flipside]

Hi,

With adaptive QMC, you can go to the QMC rollout and try to lower the noise threshold (default 0.005 to 0.0001) or lower the adaptive amount to 0.7 or something like that. That should clear up lots of the noise. This will also improve GI quality (rendertimes will be higher...)

Leave the min/max rates for qmc GI at 1/4 always