bad flickering in the IR/LC

[bradon]

Having a problem with flashing here is a little preview anyone know what this looks like and what setting I might adjust to remove the flickering. I have tried increasing the subdivisions on both the IR and LC and that seems to not help. im confused about what could be causing the problem if its some errant light or ray trace bounces. on my last leg here been trying to figure out whats causing this.

thanks,
Bradon.

http://www.paraportable.net/files/FlickerProblem_s.mov

here is a snapshot of the light setup.
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...ubleLights.png

Im wondering if you shoot a light directly behind another light if that can cause issues like this. does a light shining on a light cast a shadow? im assuming no but am i getting shadows from the group of 3 lights close to the fridge because i have 2 lights right behind them.?


im also getting alot of these errors in the various materials? any clue as to what that is about?
[2010/Jul/14|21:41:51] V-Ray warning: Material "FX_Plastic_IceGlass_material" produced overbright or invalid color (rgb=-1.#IND00 -1.#IND00 -1.#IND00).

[seq]

Hi Bradon,

did you check the color values for that material? We had that once that when we import a vrscene from Max that the color values were set to some crazy numbers.

And for the flickering: Did you render out a quick test with BF+LC? What are you settings for the LC?

[bradon]

here is my all my settings.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...l_Settings.jpg

i guess i will try a BF render im assuming that would be better but more time consuming. trying to find a way to make the IR work

I have a BUNCH of materials with this overbright or Invalad color. as far as i can tell everything is set between a 0-1 range, nothing looks out of the ordinary. what sort of crazy number were you getting?

here is the mel for one of the shaders.
// requires maya "2009";
startAttrPreset( "VRayMtl" );
blendAttr "reflectionsMaxDepth" 2;
blendAttr "refractionsMaxDepth" 5;
blendAttr "diffuseColorR" 0.9750000238;
blendAttr "diffuseColorG" 0.9750000238;
blendAttr "diffuseColorB" 0.9750000238;
blendAttr "diffuseColorAmount" 1;
blendAttr "roughnessAmount" 0;
blendAttr "colorR" 0.5;
blendAttr "colorG" 0.5;
blendAttr "colorB" 0.5;
blendAttr "transparencyR" 0;
blendAttr "transparencyG" 0;
blendAttr "transparencyB" 0;
blendAttr "reflectionColorR" 0.09089999646;
blendAttr "reflectionColorG" 0.09089999646;
blendAttr "reflectionColorB" 0.09089999646;
blendAttr "reflectionColorAmount" 0.8799999952;
blendAttr "reflectionExitColorR" 0;
blendAttr "reflectionExitColorG" 0;
blendAttr "reflectionExitColorB" 0;
blendAttr "hilightGlossinessLock" 1;
blendAttr "hilightGlossiness" 1;
blendAttr "reflectionGlossiness" 0.8500000238;
blendAttr "reflectionSubdivs" 64;
blendAttr "useFresnel" 0;
blendAttr "lockFresnelIORToRefractionIOR" 1;
blendAttr "fresnelIOR" 1.600000024;
blendAttr "reflectOnBackSide" 0;
blendAttr "softenEdge" 0;
blendAttr "anisotropy" 0;
blendAttr "anisotropyRotation" 0;
blendAttr "refractionColorR" 0;
blendAttr "refractionColorG" 0;
blendAttr "refractionColorB" 0;
blendAttr "refractionColorAmount" 1;
blendAttr "refractionExitColorR" 0;
blendAttr "refractionExitColorG" 0;
blendAttr "refractionExitColorB" 0;
blendAttr "refractionExitColorOn" 0;
blendAttr "refractionGlossiness" 1;
blendAttr "refractionSubdivs" 16;
blendAttr "refractionIOR" 1.600000024;
blendAttr "fogColorR" 1;
blendAttr "fogColorG" 1;
blendAttr "fogColorB" 1;
blendAttr "fogMult" 1;
blendAttr "fogBias" 0;
blendAttr "affectShadows" 0;
blendAttr "affectAlpha" 0;
blendAttr "traceReflections" 1;
blendAttr "traceRefractions" 1;
blendAttr "cutoffThreshold" 0.009999999776;
blendAttr "brdfType" 1;
blendAttr "bumpMapType" 0;
blendAttr "bumpMapR" 0;
blendAttr "bumpMapG" 0;
blendAttr "bumpMapB" 0;
blendAttr "bumpMult" 1;
blendAttr "bumpShadows" 0;
blendAttr "sssOn" 0;
blendAttr "translucencyColorR" 1;
blendAttr "translucencyColorG" 1;
blendAttr "translucencyColorB" 1;
blendAttr "thickness" 1000000000;
blendAttr "scatterCoeff" 0;
blendAttr "scatterDir" 1;
blendAttr "scatterLevels" 1;
blendAttr "scatterSubdivs" 8;
blendAttr "sssEnvironment" 0;
blendAttr "opacityMapR" 1;
blendAttr "opacityMapG" 1;
blendAttr "opacityMapB" 1;
blendAttr "useIrradianceMap" 1;
blendAttr "swatchAutoUpdate" 1;
blendAttr "swatchAlwaysRender" 0;
blendAttr "swatchExplicitUpdate" 0;
blendAttr "swatchMaxRes" 64;
endAttrPreset();


like i said its happening to about 20 materials. so i think its a light thats the problem. when i hide the lights the flickering goes away.. but obviously i need lights!

[bradon]

if i export one of the shaders that is causing this error into a new scene. then i add a new light apply to basic sphere. set the light to some rediculous value 5000.. i dont produce this error in a new scene.


also just to be sure i made a new render layer. create default sphere, apply my material that produce this error to the sphere, render. and i dont get this error. i used all the same lights and HDR and render settings. im assuming its caused by a bounce in the raytracing? some reflection off a piece of glass or metal piece? but there are a billion objects in this fridge as well as FOOD! sort of hard to whack this file into shape to where i can create the error with the least possible variables.

[seq]

Hm, we are also relative new to VRay - so I might be wrong, but as the doors from the fridge are closing during the animation, the light situation is changing. So you won't get away with the "Single frame" setting for IR and LC. You have to use the "Animation (prepass)" mode.

http://jg3d.blogspot.com/2009/01/ren...ith-v-ray.html

During our last project we had a lot of trouble to get a flicker-free animation with IR+LC. So we tend to go the BF+LC way. Which isn't so much slower when you tune the settings. For LC I would always use the world scale option for animations. Set the sample size to 1 or 2.

Hope this helps.

[seq]

You can also try to increase the IR subdivs to 120 and change the interp. samples to 40 or 50.

Also, the DMC Adaptive Min Samples seems quite high.

[bradon]

Hm, we are also relative new to VRay - so I might be wrong, but as the doors from the fridge are closing during the animation, the light situation is changing. So you won't get away with the "Single frame" setting for IR and LC. You have to use the "Animation (prepass)" mode.

as far as i know "single frame" mode will recalculate the IR solution on every frame so that should still work? so the light situation is changing but since it recalculated on each frame the IR should calculate properly. I thought the "Animation(prepass)" mode was for BAKING the IR into a cache that you could then use the frame blending to interpolate the IR over a range of frames. We did try to use Anim(prepass) but we found that it was sort of a pain to setup for our pipeline because we had to render the sequence once first without the raytracing and save the IR cache files. then we had to setup a second render to read the IR cach and do the raytracing. It DID actually help reduce some flickering (not all), but the setup was sort of a pain because we go throuh all that work only to find out we still have one or two hotspot flicker in our rener and have to go through the whole multistep process to bake out the redners again. we would preferr to find a single off solution thats fast and works well enough also.

testing now with a IR subdiv set to 120 and interp sample of 40. also changed the LC to world mode and set the size to 1.

the DMC adaptive min samples is high that was a tip i recieved from another memeber. the way he described it is it forces the IR to use a bunch of samples where otherwise it might throw them away where you need them. this is to help reduce any splotches in the interior and corners of objects.

you can see the post here
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...radiance-Spots

[bradon]

so I notice if I hide the doors of the fridge and use the same settings it does look ALOT better. so im not sure what to make of that. ALSO i dont get that overbright errror message anymore. overbright or invalid color (rgb=-1.#IND00 -1.#IND00 -1.#IND00).

but obviously i need doors on the fridge!

how am i gonna do this? Ill try to read the docs on the animation prepass mode agian see if there is anything that im missing there.

[Reaversword]

Brandon, get down the "Adaptive Amount" in Settings section. Leave it in 0.2 a look at the results. Render time will up, but, lets see the quality and flickering...

[bradon]

argg.. well some of those settings worked. i didn have time to try each one individually so i just increased EVERYTHING. which now my frames are 4 hours long to render!!! not so good I also increase my ray depth on the main interior material to 5 reflec and 5 refract i figure it could also be a ray depth issue.

here are my current high res settings. the result is much better but i can still even see some noise in the shadows if you can believe it. anyone got any ideas for better/faster settings that also will help remove the rest of this noise at a minimum of render time. I think overall its the lighting setup with huge area lights overlapping and alot of the lighting is comming from the GI only.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...htSettings.jpg

and showing the grain in the dark areas.
http://www.paraportable.net/files/DancingShadows_s.mov

here is a link to a log of one frame if that helps diagnose anything.
http://www.paraportable.net/files/XX...LOG_1029_7.TXT

[stezza]

Your settings seem way to high for that animation. Most of my animation is character animation with vray and I get flicker free animations every time using a fraction of the settings you have used..
Adaptive DMC 2 and 5 or 3 and 6
You should also use the animation pre-pass mode to calculate your maps at every frame LC is baked with the IR maps so the LC can be turned off during the animation render mode, set the secondary bounce to none!
Medium animation setting set to 50 and 30
DMC sampler adaptive amount .9 yours is too low
Adaptive min samples 8 to 12 should be fine.
Also make sure you have your lights samples set to 30+

[seq]

Hi Bradon,

man I feel your pain. We was in the same situation some weeks ago. And we really end up with BF+LC, because in the time you need to set up IR+LC, you can also render away with BF+LC! Another problem is that every VRay user seems to have its own way to set up Vray. And it seems that there is not one golden way to go, but there are dozen routes to heaven!

Hm, on the image of your settings "Refractive Caustics" are disabled. Why that? This should be enabled as this will allow indirect light to pass through transparent objects.

Also I would use the "Nearest" filter type for LC and set the Filter samples to 25- 50.

What are you using for the environment GI, reflection and refraction texture?

And definitely use the "Use camera path" for LC and IR.

All the best
Lars

[bradon]

thanks for all the help and support. trying everything i can. I know my settings are really high currently. problem is i need to know which setting to adjust for a flicker free clean render. so i have been increasing everything in the hope that it will actually improve someting. so here is another image. the problem seems to be getting worse if you can believe it!

here are two adjacent frames. so whats the deal here why on one frame looks good but on the next frame everything went kaput.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...bb/Compare.jpg

i guess ill try to ditch the IR and go with brute force see if that works for me

[bradon]

we found a single material was causing all this trouble. will have to confirm in the morning after the render tests are done. it was a material which we used the new refraction/reflection exit color :/ when we hide that object or change the material we dont get that overbright error anymore and it renders without any of that flickering. Ha this whole time i've been messing with the render settings and it was the ice material that was driving everything nutso

[seq]

Glad you find a solution and good to know that there might be a problem with the new exit color.

All the best for your project!