Animation noise / flicker (here too)

[cpnichols]

...actually, we've noticed that even with "incremental add to current map", moving object shadows still flicker when they (the moving objects) are in shadow...not in direct light....so we've actually had to hit the object(s) with it's own light (excluding everything else) to work around this....

Why are you doing an "incemental add to current map" on moving objects? It is not designed to be used for moving objects.

[igorknez]

Hey Chris.... good to hear from you! Hey isn't it time to go and get some beer in the neighborhood?

>>>>You may want to get more light bounces in there. Since you are using 1.45 you may way to try to use the new lightmap method for your secondary bounces. this will essentialy do infinit light bounces, at very
little computational expense. <<<<

I did exactly that.... and I think I am coming to solution to this - I'll try to post some more AVIs now and tomorrow - to kinda close this topic.

It looks to me problem was / is - in Lightmaps and its settings.


>>>>Use irradiance for the primary at medium animation, and lightmap for the secondary. Don't cache any files or anything, just render as is. In the incemental add to map stuff is only for static scenes with only the camera moving.<<<<

Again, That's precisely what I am doing - but today I said let's scrape lightmap and I used QMC for secondary.... it did take longer time but it rendered without flicker. However, whole scene got darker - which is normal, I guess, since QMC calculates light in defferent way.

(excuse my stupid little animations here - but I can't wait that long for renders - so I give you what I have - I may have some longer ones tomorrow)

here's how it looks with QMC for secondary:

http://www.flaregroup.com/temp/pot-qmc.avi no flicker

so then I went back to lightmaps and rendered this.
http://www.flaregroup.com/temp/pot-lmap.avi It's only 10 frames or so but NO FLICKER however, maaaan.... it takes loooong time.... longer than QMC method.

compare this to (from yesterday):
http://www.flaregroup.com/temp/pot-lmap-fl.avi
and see flicker in every frame. (this one is without spotlight - but it makes no diferrence anyway)

It looks to me the problem was with sample size in lightmap settings.
it was something like. 0.02 or so.... but when I reduced that to 0.001 it looked like flicker reduced significantly. Funny thing is - it doesn't seem to change much if I change number of subdivs in lightmap.
I tried really large number but if sample size was .02 it would flicker no matter what. Reduce sample size - less flicker.
I mean, I don't know if I am onto something here - but as long as flicker is away I am happy potatoe.

Don't know why that car in some of earlier animation didn't flicker that much...

But now, when I put my dummy car back into scene.... lightmap takes really, really long time to calculate - to the point I thik it is better to go back to QMC for secondary.

Whew..... well, I'll put something to render overnight and see what render times are.

Time to sleep now

[cpnichols]

Igor...

there are two different types of sample size in Lightmap... one is based on pixel (screen) size, the other based on geometry size. try switching between them.