Ward mats in Reflections

[Dman3d]

Did a bit-o-searching with no luck so far so here goes, but with my luck it in a sticky and someone will lance me for asking.
Anyway.

I have a stainless mat that I can get to clean up and smooth out noise wise, but where ever that shows up
in another reflection (the floor) I cannot seem to get rid of the noise, the floor itself is also clean except where that
stainless mat shows up.
Higher anisotropic values produce more noise, lower values including 0 (zero) still produce noise
If I switch the stainless mat to blinn the noise is gone. Of course ward is supposed to produce that
rough look of scratches or whatever but I was hoping to get a that smoother result everywhere since
it appear most like a natural super soft metal.

and I suppose I will try an override mat with a blinn in the reflect slot but wondering what other possibilities
there may be, could be Im just not thinking straight after staring at it so long.

[Morbid Angel]

what are the reflection subdivisions on your ward material?

[Dman3d]

Hey Morbid thanks for the quick reply, 128 at present, floor is also 128
Stainless .8 highlight glossiness
.98 Ref glossiness
Ward fiddling between .3 - .8 aand -.3 - -.8 to see what looks best

Using close to the settings you suggested in another thread about noise
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...=noise+general

trying BF 256/LC 2000 and IR medium 50~70 and high 50~70/20 LC
ADMC 3/16 .005 ~
VRay ligth shadow subdivs 128~256
DMC Sampler .85~.7 -.01~.007

Problem is the project I am working on is going to be a total of over 22+ mins of output
not all of that is animation but still and post trickery but I need leverage to make frames when I can
to keep it from looking too lame. (I know vague and generic) So I am attempting to keep time @720p
around hour-ish per frame (it would be a great job if not for the clients)

[Morbid Angel]

that's really high settings for seeing much noise. Can you post a crop of your render to show the issue? also, the cause of noise can be a very fine texture, without filtering it will create unresolvable noise.

[Dman3d]

Let me see what I can do for an image, using summed area bitmap filtering, will try pyramidal and see if it works any better.
Be just a bit

[Dman3d]

Ah balls, my VPN is blowing, have to get you some sample image in the morning when Im physically at my workstation.
In short it looks like a pixel mosh pit when the camera moves in those areas, just noisy in a still of course.
Will get the samples sorted first thing AM.

-----
still working on it, may answer my own question

[Dman3d]

The only difference between the two is switching from ward .8 anisotropy to Blinn with no anisotropy
I guess its just the behavior of the ward, which seems to be doing what its supposed to, more samples
and lower noise threshold but the times are getting to a not usable situation for me.
So it looks like ward scatters more so more noise, or rather needs more samples to smooth out,
like the reflection of the edge for the blinn sample is pretty noisy too. Or like something really blurry needs
more samples but I guess I did not expect it to be that way since the ref gloss is only .98
I suppose to I never really needed it to be cleaner but the animation is trying to kill me.

I guess some playing back and forth with noise threshold vs subdivs etc to see if I can get
a more reasonable time (which is around 1 to 1.5 hour-ish per frame @720 average in the farm, mix of old and new q6600s to i920's)

BF 256/LC 2000 .01 nearest 20 prefilter 10 retrace 1 use LC for glossy rays
Mats 256 subdivs, summed area - going to compare pyramidal
Lights 128

That label in the image should be Ward RGB not diffuse

[Dman3d]

Ah well, hrmm, getting in to noise ward or no, going back and start everything over again to make sure I am seeing what I think I am seeing.
Certainly using maps for refection and reflection glossies seem to make it near impossible to get a clean image in any reasonable time.

and using area AA filter, will try with none as well. So I may be in the noise pit in general and not a specific issue with ward, not using ward
now and still having noise issues, will update whenever I re-sort that.