removing the subdivisions from the motion blur settings is a real PITA to the workflow.
Before, I could flick motion blur on and off during any step in my work flow, for test rendering, and the extra AA for motion blur would only be active during motion blur. Now you’d have to go back and forth in your AA settings, too. And have a little postit on the screen about the optimal motion blur/no motion blur setting per scene…
The new thing is not a major show stopper or anything, but it’s a usability issue that was fine before, but now it’s annoying.
I know this thread says there was never a “motion blur only” control, but in effect there was, since the extra subdivision was only on when motion blur was activated.
Not to mention that fixing the AA to produce similar results as if I was to increase mblur subdivs is, at least for me, much more complicated.
In a simple example with a teapot flying fast by the camera, vray 2.5 produces grainy mblur at the default subdivs - so I increase it till it looks good, which is around 18, which renders in 8 secs.
In Vray 3.0, even if I set max subdivs to more than a hundred, I still get grain. So I have to experiment with the minimum subdivs, which starts to affect render time noticeably. I end up with an 18/18 setting before I match the grain-free quality of Vray 2.5, but the render time is now 36 secs.
I’m sure the new way technically makes perfect sense from a developer’s point of view, but it’s not what the artists need - please bring back the old UI, it does exactly what the users need.
Tweaking AA settings includes not only Max Subdivisions levels, if the the quality is not sufficient even with hundred of subdivisions then most probably the Color Threshold value (or DMC Threshold value,if Color Threshold is locked to it) is too high. Try to set the Max SubD = 18, leave Min SubD=1 and decrease the Color Threshold Parameter - you should be able to get the same quality like in 2.5 for even less rendertime. If that is not the case please send the scene for investigation.
The procedure you describe is much more complicated than what you had before.
Plus, by making that change I’m also changing the render settings to be unnecessarily high, for when I disable motion blur 10 minutes later, for testing.
Really, this is a feature that worked, that is now broken.
Even with a color threshold of 0 and a rendertime of 40 seconds (versus vray 2.50’s 5 seconds), I’m still getting more grain. Of course I could experiment with further increasing the max value and then decreasing the color threshold again.
But again, this illustrates how the new setup is gibberish compared to the old one. You have to bring it back, this new thing makes no sense.
Why did you change it and why is it not coming back?
Then it would be best to get me a scene to vlado@chaosgroup.com - it may mean there is a bug somewhere.
You have to bring it back, this new thing makes no sense.If there is a bug, I’d rather we fixed it. You should be able to get the same or even better results for faster render times; if that’s not the case, like I said it may mean there is a problem somewhere.
It seems that there is a bug with Image Filtering in Vray 3.x since the noise comes mainly from it.
Please uncheck Image Filter option in both version 2.5 and 3.0, then use the following settings in Vray 3.x and you will get the same image quality but Vray 3.x will render it twice as fast.
Vlado, please download my new teapot test scene (I’ve increased resolution, subdivisions and polygons to get longer render times, to get more useful comparisons).
Attached are my test renders, that compare an AA 1/28 render from Vray 2.5 with various settings from 3.0.
The process of testing combinations of the four parameters that have been mentioned by Chaos Group developers and support, is a time-consuming puzzle compared to the subdivisions of 2.5, and I still haven’t figured out what settings I should use to match the quality of 2.5 without tripling the render times.
Can you please tell me the optimal render settings for matching the quality of 2.5? Thanks.
Bit of an oddity too - if I render this with min AA of 1, it’s missing the corner of one of the buckets at the top right of the teapot. I’m using the vray_adv_30507_max2014_x64_24748 nightly. If I up the minimum aa to 2 or the geometry samples in the motion blur to 3 we’ve no issues so it’s solvable but might be a thing worth looking at.
Thanks Svetlozar for the Image filter tip too - you’re right about it causing extra grain!
Cheers - I’d say what’s happening might be a minimum rays / samples thing where it’s firing rays into the bucket that are just missing the geometry due to the temporal aspect of motion blur being added, and early termination is kicking in giving us a blank result.
Svetlozar / Vlado :
Just as an aside it turns out that missing bucket error is down to the lock noise pattern checkbox. I re-opened the file to confirm the error based on what Dave had mentioned, out of the box with Jussing’s file there’s no issue but as I was fiddling with the file with the settings I’d normally apply it was turning off lock noise pattern that made the bucket drop out. I’ll pretty much always try to use min 1 aa cos I’m cheap but I’ll also have lockj noise turned off so the grain dances on any of my moving renders. Here’s the file with the error if you render with the vray_adv_30507_max2014_x64_24748 nightly - this might be a glitch only in this version though. vray_mblur_subdivs28_vray_30507_lock_noise_pattern_off.zip (21.2 KB)
I had this a lot of times in the last few weeks, also in scenes with no motion blur at all. Last recent case was a simple greyshade of a car interior, nothing special in that scene except for a domelight and a grey override material. It seems to be happening in older versions of Vray too, because one of our Maya guys had the same issue in 2.4
Hi guys! As far as I know the missing bucket issue happens when the cast samples aren’t hitting anything in the bucket and VRay thinks the bucket is empty. This happens a lot with motion blurred edges and thin wires.
To get around it you can increase the bucket size as Dave mentioned, in effect including more in the bucket and lowering the chances of it rendering empty. Another option is to raise the min samples so the chances are better for a sample hitting something. Locking the noise might have switched the samples around so that when it’s enabled the bucket would render.
I’ve seen this happen from time to time in all VRay versions, easy to work around though.
OK, so I got the scene back from support with improved render settings (tweaking a total of three parameters) which work OK - but they still don’t produce as good results as my 2.5 example.
I’ve made another test, where I’ve bumped up the settings even more to match the simple 2.5 example, and found that I have to increase minimum samples also to get close, but I end up with a 3 times slower render.
(see the attached image, once again with a sharpened image on the right)
Cons of the new motion blur in 3.0:
- You have to tweak a combination of four different parameters instead of one. (the official way is three parameters, but I’ve added the fourth because I found I had to increase minimum samples also, to get good results. If this is a bug or me not using it right, I take it back).
- Much slower (again, because of the minimum samples)
- If you, after mblur tweaking, turn off mblur, the non-mblur frame now takes long time to render (21 seconds versus 1 second!) (once again, because of minimum samples)
Pros:
- None that I have seen.
There’s a pattern there about the minimum samples. Bug? I don’t know.
I should add that I have V-Ray 2.5 on my 3dsmax 2014, and 3.0 on 3dsmax 2015.
Please, support, developers or users, provide me with render settings for my demo scene, that makes the V-Ray 3.0 render match the 2.5 render, and preferably a screenshot to boot. (so we’re not comparing your 3.0 render with my 2.5 render, wondering about other differences such as CPU, 3dsmax versions, nightly build etc)
I’d say a lot of things have changed in raytracing from vray 2.x to 3 and something like this mightn’t be a good indication of it from a speed point of view since it’s such a simple scene.
Good point. But I didn’t want to clutter the test by including other potential grain sources like Vray lights or blurred reflections… then, for every grainy image I’d post there would be the potential “maybe you should bump up the light subdivisions”, “have you tried to increase reflection settings”, etc..
Vlado & support - my point remains. I’ve been testing your motion blur for a week and found the following conclusion:
Cons with the new motion blur:
- We need to control FOUR parameters instead of one. Three according to Chaos Group, but I’ve found you also need to tweak minimum samples. Some of these are totally secret and mysterious (who would guess that you need to adjust “color threshold” to get proper motion blur?!) I think this is super bad user interface. I doubt anyone could like this.
- Render times are three times slower if you want to get close to the quality with good settings from Vray 2.5 (I know you disagree with this - but all my tests show this behaviour)
- AA settings don’t revert back to non-mblur when you turn mblur off, so after you have turned it off, your non-mblur renders are 5-10 times slower than they need to be (not a showstopper, but an obvious, objective set-back in user friendliness)
but I’ll also have lockj noise turned off so the grain dances on any of my moving renders. Here’s the file with the error if you render with the vray_adv_30507_max2014_x64_24748 nightly - this might be a glitch only in this version though.