Optimize Textures

[glorybound]

I set my blur to .1. Are you saying that this can slow my render times? Should I set things to 1, or .7, like you mention?

[Joelaff]

I would, but that’s me. Also, note I am doing animations. For stills do whatever looks good. No flickering to deal with.

Sharper textures usually render more slowly, but I bet we are talking like ~1%. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You could test it.

[glorybound]

Yeah, after an afternoon of testing, it isn't worth optimizing. At least not for my exterior stills. I have an animation coming down the pike, so I am trying to see if I can speed things up with some optimizations. I am not sure Vanatge can cut it, and GPU is a bit flaky.

[kosso_olli]

Setting the "Blur" setting to something much lower than the default of 1.0 can certainly increase render times (and I would argue looks like crap, but I know a lot of people do this, but a lot of people text and drive as well).

I'd like to join in on this argument, as this might not be a good way to do things in high-res rendering for print. Attached are two crops of a 12k render of a reflector on the rear bumper of a car, the structure is texture-driven. One is with 0 blur, the other has a blur of 0,75.
Would you agree that 0 blur looks best?
By the way, I'm not the text-and-drive guy, I hate this too.

[Joelaff]

For stills less blur is often desirable. Yes, your sharper one looks better in the context of that shot. Start animating and you have to balance the sharpness with the flicker/aliasing/crawling. I wonder how they would compare at a more oblique angle. Do you always go full sharp on your reflector textures like that? I know that sort of texture is challenging, and you seem to nail it.

We are typically matching live action plates that are almost never that sharp. Usually the lens isn’t anywhere near that sharp on a motion picture camera. Though there are now some that are getting pretty crisp.

For a shot that would traditionally be done with a view camera I could totally see going sharper like you have here. It is definitely very shot dependent, and texture dependent. It looks like there is a moire in that reflector texture without the blur.

I should not have made a gross generalization (but they are so much fun). However, I start soft, and only sharpen when required. Like anything in 3d, if you have the time you keep making little tweaks and refinements until you are happy or run out of time/money

[fixeighted]

As always it is horses for courses imo. I reduce blur when it is an issue and leave it as it is if not.
Honestly, I think we all overthink these things a bit. If all viewers were vfx artists then it'd be hard to get anything approved or released

[glorybound]

I agree. When I get a second in the week, I try to see what would improve render times and what would not. Years ago, it mattered, but today, not so much.

[kosso_olli]

For stills less blur is often desirable. Yes, your sharper one looks better in the context of that shot. Start animating and you have to balance the sharpness with the flicker/aliasing/crawling. I wonder how they would compare at a more oblique angle. Do you always go full sharp on your reflector textures like that? I know that sort of texture is challenging, and you seem to nail it.

We are typically matching live action plates that are almost never that sharp. Usually the lens isn’t anywhere near that sharp on a motion picture camera. Though there are now some that are getting pretty crisp.

For a shot that would traditionally be done with a view camera I could totally see going sharper like you have here. It is definitely very shot dependent, and texture dependent. It looks like there is a moire in that reflector texture without the blur.

I should not have made a gross generalization (but they are so much fun). However, I start soft, and only sharpen when required. Like anything in 3d, if you have the time you keep making little tweaks and refinements until you are happy or run out of time/money

For animations I agree that more blur helps.

For stills we mostly set blur to 0. The issue is especially visible on automotive interior shots, with lots of woven fabrics etc. Patterns just start to get mushy with higher blur values.
The still plates we get from the photographers are extremely crisp these days. They better should be, judging by the price tags for the lenses...

[Joelaff]

What filtering method do you typically use? Isotopic sharp or something else?

I found that moire on the reflector to be interesting. Wondered if other filtering methods had any effect. Is that a tiled format (pre MIP mapped like tx or tiled exr) or filtered entirely in the rendering?

My background is large format photography— studio and location, and we were so often seeking sharpness. Funny how so many cinematographers actively seek out older lenses. I tend to be in between, but it depends on the aesthetic of the scene of course. Taking film out of the equation has made things almost too sterile in a lot of cases.