Same old question: BF or IM for animation

[Yuli Laz]

Hi All,

The client requested an animation. Total 450 frames which is ok. It is a shorty. The scene is pretty complex - perforated metal panels, lots of fritted glass and all this lighten up with HDRI lighting, dusk/sunset and interior lighting. No moving objects.

 

I had tried multiple options, and still trying to optimize the settings how to make it time efficient but not very noisy at the same time.

 

I tried progressive and bucket. But with GI....I am still trying BF and IM.

I read on forums that IM will give the flickering if you render animation. But honestly I like how the rendered time per frame vs image quality (I am testing one frame now only). It is less noisy. But with BF it is more detailed but so much time!!! so no no no!

 

I have a feeling I am doing something wrong....but I can't figure out what it is. Whatever might look good, takes forever to render. And if the time per image is acceptable - it looks like crap and very noisy.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, your question is the core workflow of rendering, Quality Vs Time, that's what it is all about.

Brute force will give you better GI and better shading overall but it will take longer compared to any interpolated method.

 

Now V-Ray has detail enhancement inside Irradiance map, that help you to get better GI solution if your Irradiance is low or quick so that could help you.

Also, the denoiser works fine with animations, but there is a decent lost of quality so I always rather get a little noise image instead of a 'blurry' denoised image.

 

Have you tried playing with the minimum shade rate? from your description that may help you to speed up your brute force method.

By default is 6 but you can increase that value to 20 or more if your scene doesn't have small details like patterns or grass, then all those samples will help to render faster glossy reflections, refractions, GI and others.

try increasing this value before you increase your Max sampler.

Now remember that in animations the noise is more acceptable than in still images. some of the noise get covered by the natural blur of the camera movement(if you apply a small motion blur in post or you activate in V-Ray camera)

This is the render noise and not the splotches of bad GI or bad shaders.

[Yuli Laz]

Thank you, I will try to do that. Regarding denoiser - it worked on single frame but when i rendered sequence, it rendered all black. Maybe I did not do it correctly. I will try again. I might also apply smart blur in PP, will check how it looks.

 

Thank you again

[Francisco Penaloza]

To apply any blur effect in post you need to output a velocity map otherwise it will look bad or strange.

IF you don't want to deal with that using the in-camera effect would be the best choice.

[Yuli Laz]

thank you for the suggestion. I helped. I appreciate it.