Check my noise levels?

[stayinwonderland]

Here's the image. Thoughts on if noise levels could be reduced and how:

 

 

Settings:

 

Pixels: 1200 x 600 (so obviously increasing render size will help)

DMC: 2/6

Col Map: Exponential (0.9/1.2/1) sub pixel checked, clamp output checked

IRR: medium, Hsph 100, interp 30

LC: 3000 (everything else default)

DMC sampler: noise 0.002, min samples 16, subdivs multi 3.0

 

Thanks.

[unrinoceronte]

Is difficult to see in my screen the noise in your image... I think that it is on the floor, right after the thin vertical strip of light?... If that so, maybe increasing the subdivisions of that particular vray light, or perhaps all the vraylights..? or more subdivsions on the wood floor material?

[stayinwonderland]

if you right click on the image and open in new tab/window you should see ok. It's all over the image.

 

If the min subdivs is set to 16 and the multiplier is set to 3.0, doesn't that mean the min samples are 48? possibly much higher? (because I think the floor reflections are set to at least 24, possibly 32).

[Ernest Burden III]

Why? Looks good. Though I usually render to much lower resolution than most people, and I would do this at twice your 1200.

 

Now, pull that armchair away from the wall a little and turn it slightly towards the center of the scene. Just because. And greatly reduce the blowing of the far curtain, so that it falls within the visual line of that other chair. Doing that will place more emphasis on the back wall which has the 'interesting' element of the door cracked open. You make the point of the blowing curtains with the fore two. Make a dialog between the two chairs since they are the most human references in the scene. How is the 'minor' chair reacting to the 'major' chair?

[Chris MacDonald]

The antialiasing sampler works based on contrast, if you have your exposure set as low as you do in your image it's going to struggle to differentiate between two dark samples, thus producing noise. This can also be made quite a bit worse if you aren't using a gamma 2.2 setup within vray.

 

Try rendering it at a brighter exposure to deal with the noise, then adjust the exposure in the VFB (which uses floating point values, so no loss in quality), or in photoshop/post. It doesn't have to be a massively brighter exposure, just enough to give the sampler something to work with.

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the tips Chris.

 

I'm doing a final render right now at 3600 pixels wide, full settings, and so far the noise is ok (it's only rendered the top half so we'll have to see how the floor wood goes).

 

But out of interest, how do you affect exposure in VFB? (I never use the vray VFB).

[Chris MacDonald]

If you never use the frame buffer then firstly you want to make sure the sRGB button is checked, otherwise it will display the image with a gamma of 1 (regardless of your 3Ds Max settings, this is part of the plugin and not a part of max).

 

Then to access the exposure/curves control you click on the button in the bottom left of the VFB, which will bring up this:

 

 

The slider at the very top will adjust exposure, and the next part is your levels, then curves beneath.

[notamondayfan]

I was also going to suggest increasing the brightness of the scene, and then adjusting the exposure in post. Vray needs light samples to calculate noise, so if there is little light, then it'll struggle.

 

Also check that no vray plane lights are intersecting any geometry, as this will cause a lot of noise.

 

Finally if your still not satisfied with the noise levels, try neat image for Photoshop. This is a noise reduction plugin and works very well.

 

Dean

[stayinwonderland]

That plug-in sounds very interesting. Yes, I was actually getting some pretty clean results when I put the Hsph subdivs up to 100 and rendered at 3600px.

 

Here's the final image with post and everything (make sure and view in full y'all)...

 

 

In future I think I will go brighter and reduce in post (or VFB).

[Ernest Burden III]

Here's the final image...

 

Oh. You didn't respond to my compositional crits so I suppose you don't want any now. It was a thread about noise, after all.

[stayinwonderland]

yeah, if a) the piece was finished, b) I was asking for composition crits and c) you didn't say "just because", I might have responded. Even if I had asked for composition crits, giving crits should always be backed up with reasoning. So yeah, it's just a waste of the critics time to crit something that isn't finished.

 

As it stands now I think there's an area of empty space between her shoulder and the bookcase that could be filled as I think the eye wants to travel into the scene from the bottom left, travel up the converging lines to her shoulder, then bounce off into that shoulder into the bookcase.

[Ernest Burden III]

yeah, if ...you didn't say "just because", I might have responded...

 

That was a joke, and it was a full and reasoned crit, albeit brief. But I'm sure you'll do fine.

[Tommy L]

yeah, if a) the piece was finished, b) I was asking for composition crits and c) you didn't say "just because", I might have responded. Even if I had asked for composition crits, giving crits should always be backed up with reasoning. So yeah, it's just a waste of the critics time to crit something that isn't finished.

 

As it stands now I think there's an area of empty space between her shoulder and the bookcase that could be filled as I think the eye wants to travel into the scene from the bottom left, travel up the converging lines to her shoulder, then bounce off into that shoulder into the bookcase.

 

Thats fightin' talk where I come from.

[stayinwonderland]

I only need to look at a thread these days for it to explode, lol. Sometimes it's ok to just be frank. No harm done.

[Tommy L]

I just meant it was a little bit of a brush-off. And its a waste of the critics time to crit something that isn't finished? Isnt it more productive to give creative advice whilst the image is still in a malleable state?

[stayinwonderland]

I would argue that it's counter productive, if someone posts a problem and someone replies saying "ah your problem is fine, but what you really want to do is bla" where bla has nothing to do with the question. This isn't so much a creative issue as a forum efficiency issue.

 

Hell, I don't even mind if someone acknowledges my problem, offers a solution and THEN offers some composition feedback. Anyway, let's just drop it. This could have ended ages ago. All nice, happy families

Edited July 17, 2013 by stayinwonderland

[Ernest Burden III]

No harm done.

 

I'm dead on the floor, damn it!

[Ismael]