Noise and overall quality with 1.5

[muzzy]

If it is animation, change your scale to world. Screen is only for stills. I will also check the adaptive option in lightcache.

[mmikee]

Thanks for the tips, muzzy.

[studioDIM]

something that popped to my eyes is that you have a lot of glossies, at varying spread, all with the same subdivs levels.
From my own experience i'd say that the lower the glossiness, the higher the samples needed.
Also, while on some of those materials you will want proper glossy reflections, on some other you might try and "fake" them, by using non-glossy reflections and unlocking the specular, using the latter to generate highlights.
This will be a lot quicker and cleaner, and i doubt that in most cases, in an animation, the difference will be noticeable on the whole.
You can also turn off entirely "trace" reflections, to obtain non-raytraced speculars.
Another thing i'd do to lower rendertimes, would be to switch to QMC AA, but not set it to 1-100, rather to something like 1-16 or 1-24 (in some cases 1-12 does marvels, but it is scene dependant), and i'd turn off filtering entirely.
The high sampling would clean up what needed, AA all the lines, and do all this more quickly thanks to the filter being off.
You can always postprocess the image later, adding slight 2.5D moblur in post, or slightly filter the image through a blur, to cover up any problematic area.

Hope it helps something...

Lele

[mmikee]

Thanks for the tips. Every bit of advice helps. I apreciate you taking the
time to reply.

Cheers!
Mike

[Clifton Santiago]

mmike,

I did a test render with your settings, and then my optimized settings, and I cut your frame time in half and improved the image quality.

The main things I did for speed were to switch to QMC AA, increase the QMC noise threshold to 0.01 (which is roughly equivalent of 0.002 in 1.47). I also turned up your Global subdivs multiplier to 4, and turned down your IR Hsph Subdivs to 12, to compenstate (this still means you have 48 Hsph subdivs). And I turned on LC for glossies. I also changed your image sampler back up to default (1,4).

In terms of general strategy, I think you have too many light sources. I would strip it all down to the sun, and start over using as few lights as possible. When using vray planar lights you can use one longer light for multiple physical light fixtures or window openings. Also, its a fairly intensive model, in terms of display and polygon count. I would try to separate the model into a couple different models if possible.

I could post the file I modified if you want, as well as the two test renders.

Aaron

[joconnell]

Mike - they look fantastic.

[ene.xis]

mmike,

I did a test render with your settings, and then my optimized settings, and I cut your frame time in half and improved the image quality.

The main things I did for speed were to switch to QMC AA, increase the QMC noise threshold to 0.01 (which is roughly equivalent of 0.002 in 1.47). I also turned up your Global subdivs multiplier to 4, and turned down your IR Hsph Subdivs to 12, to compenstate (this still means you have 48 Hsph subdivs). And I turned on LC for glossies. I also changed your image sampler back up to default (1,4).

In terms of general strategy, I think you have too many light sources. I would strip it all down to the sun, and start over using as few lights as possible. When using vray planar lights you can use one longer light for multiple physical light fixtures or window openings. Also, its a fairly intensive model, in terms of display and polygon count. I would try to separate the model into a couple different models if possible.

I could post the file I modified if you want, as well as the two test renders.

Aaron

yeah...i got to this too...i think u can also reduce at about 40% ur reflections to get faster results...
i m still workin on it pm when ur online!

[tricky]

I've been following this thread and trying the various suggestions to get the blotches out of my current animation. We have done a reasonable amount of animated work in the past, but this time I wanted to up the ante by raising the quality of the renders.

I have an apartment into which a vray sun is shining through a few ornate windows. At present, for simplicity, this is my only light source (apart from vraysky). I am using a vray camera so that I can control exposure. Here are some of my settings:

Camera:
f-number: 8.0
shutter speed: 30
ISO: 200

Render Settings:
Primary: Irmap, medium preset with HSph subdivs at 20, detail enhancement on and set to world scale with 0.3 as the radius (we are using meters)
Secondary: LC, 2000 samples, sample size 0.02 at world scale, LC used for glossies
rQMC Sampler at default apart from global multiplier at 4
Image Sampler: Adaptive QMC, 1-24 with aa filter turned off

I am using a global override material which is a plain grey. I am also using gamma color correction with 0.4545 as the inverse gamma.

When I render just the LC and look at the unfiltered results, the samples look a 'nice' size, akin to Vlados animation tutorial.

Could the blotches be down to a combination of not enough light bouncing around the scene at the moment (just the vraysun/vraysky) and using a vraycamera to 'boost' the brightness of the image?

Here's an image that I hope explains my problem - you can see 'dirty' shading along the finer edges and in the doors of the cabinets. It is also quite obvious on the large flat areas of the image. Shouldn't I be able to get these nice and crisp? BTW the brightness on the counter is the sun coming through the stone arched windows.

[ene.xis]

i found that u had to bump the irrmap values to hiher values to get a clean result!
anyway try to render with ur LC solution filtered to make sure it s ok

[tricky]

this is with 50 HSph subdivs (still with the 4x global multiplier). As you can see, it is still blotchy

[tricky]

here's two renders of the LC, the first is unfiltered and the second is filtered. Is this the cause of my problems?

[joconnell]

The lc sample size looks a little small to me?

[tricky]

OK, I'll try upping its size a bit. Its currently at 0.02 (world units) so thats about 2cm. I'll up it to .05 (5cm) and see what happens. I was just concerned that some of my joints and finer details are only a few mm accross, so setting the LC samples to be bigger than these would mean the samples couldn't get in them - am I right with this way of thinking?

Another idea: do you think my scene is 'light starved'? i.e. not enough light in the scene so any feint blotches are enhanced (worstened) with my vraycamera/gamma settings

[joconnell]

Yeah it could maybe use a higher multiplier alright - For the LC stuff you don't need detail since you're using it for secondary bounces - they tend to be quite soft anyway and won't contribute to the sharp detail in the smaller areas - you're probably looking for a smooth result from your LC rather than detailed - you're getting that from your irmap or qmc in the primary bounce.

[mmikee]

Thanks for the help guys. Sorry I havent posted back on this.
Clifton...If you can post that would be great. I would like to re-render a couple
frames using your settings. I have also been optimising the settings here.
I would like to compare my new settings, and your settings.
Enexis...Thanks for taking time to help. I know we are all busy, so it means alot.

Regards,
Mike