Hi all,
I find myself ALWAYS changing the “blur” parameter of a bitmap from the default 1.0 to 0 (almost 0).
Doing research on how to change the default to 0, I found that autodesk recommends “You should always use some blurring on your maps to avoid the type of scintillation, or aliasing that can occur when pixel details are reduced off in the distance.”
Any thoughts on this?
Is this applicable to Vray’s AA too?
Does anyone know how to change this default?
Thanks!
We have talked about this a lot. The trend has been to turn it off, but I am not sure why. Blurring it should be faster for VRay, and make things look less sharp, which is good. You can use VMC to control blur.
Sorry, I need to do a better job on searching on the forum then. Thanks mate.
Actually, I can’t find anything specifically about this. Do you have a thread in mind?
I search bitmap filtering and a bunch came up. Here is one which is specific
I would say that you should never turn off filtering, but that is my 25 or more years of CGI and real world photography talking. No lens is that sharp.
For a stills do whatever you want. For an animation turning off filtering or turning blurring below about 0.4 or so is not a good plan in my experience, regardless of its effect on render times. I go out of my way to make things softer, using the “soften” image sampler at a radius of 3.5-4.3 as this is what real lenses do. And, no, that is not the same as blurring it in the post. It is slower than the area filter, but look at super bright highlight edges and they looks so much better that it is often worth the slight render hit.
We seem to get into these trends and turning off filter was one. I tried turning it off, but it didn’t speed things up; sometimes it slowed things down, so I stopped. Most of these optimization scripts now tell you to turn it off, or turn it way down, and usually for speed.
I think a couple of the online training schools (like one that starts with G) started teaching this a while back… They do it in every program, not just Max. Never looks good to my eye. Textures crawl, and are unrealistically sharp. It typically appeals to the same crowd that likes a lot of unsharp masking 
I find you get a more photographic look by making things softer like real lenses, and then sharpening them a hint, like you would do for film, or like HD cameras do at the debayer stage.
I would advise against turning it off completely (though you can probably reduce the blur a bit). If you want sharper textures, in V-Ray 3.10 there is experimental elliptical filtering in VRayHDRI and you can play with that to see if you can get better results.
Best regards,
Vlado
Do you mean using VrayHDRI as a texture loader for any bitmaps as opposed to the standard bitmap node/map?
Stan
Yes. There’s not much that I can do about the standard bitmaps.
Best regards,
Vlado
I wouldn’t turn filtering off. I was referring just to the fake blurring on coordinates/blur.
I’ll suggest a script on scriptspot that changes the blur to 0.1 or whatever. I may be lucky and someone will write it. Changing one by one is frustrating.
There’s already one called “mass filtering”. Does the job perfectly every time.
It seem to be unavailable.
So it does… I shall upload it tomorrow when I get to work, if you wish?
That’d be much appreciated. Thanks Macker.
Watch out for moire patterns, shimmering textures and bumps, etc.. I still think 0.1 is too low for all but product shots where the client demands you can read the writing on their box. It’s just not realistic.
I would like the script to set them all to bout 1.0 to undo what other mess up by lowering it
1 looks awful in animations. as the camera moves to see something at a glancing angle it turns to mush, it’s way too extreme. we blur everything slightly in post anyway, it’s turned off for consistency instead of sharpness.
The elliptic filter in the latest VRayHDRI is really the ideal. You get the sharpness and detail, without the issues of non-filtered texture maps.
Way to go Vlado! That’s our new default.
Mass filtering script
Mass Filtering v0.2.zip (1.14 KB)