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View Full Version : Vray grain giving me an ulcer

lonewolfx
02-09-2012, 10:45 PM
so i've spent hours and hours pouring through tutorials and dozens of forum threads on the topic of vray and noise/grain and STILL i can't fix this.

i'm trying to render my 3D model of a toy plastic castle. i will eventually have a camera animation on this but for now i can't even get a still of it to look good.

this render below is after me tweaking it to the point of reducing the grain/noise by about 50%...

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a389/ragefilm/renderdeath.jpg

you should have seen this before! still it's not good enough because i'll be compositing live actors over top of this and they are shot on a DSLR in HD so it's not going to match up with this grainy render.

about my vray set up. just a simple vray sun.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a389/ragefilm/scenesetup.jpg

here are some of my render settings...

Adaptive DMC

Antialiasing - Off

Adaptive DMC image sampler:
min subs 1
max subs 16
clr threshold 0.005

GI on

Primary: Irradiance:
multiplier 1.0
HSph subs 40
Show calc. phase checked

Secondary: Light Cache
multiplier 0.85
Subs 700
Sample size 0.03
Show calc. phase unchecked

Environment

GI Environment (skylight) override OFF

(when I turn this on it gets dark, have to use very high multiplier to balance it out, and the grain issue is no better)

DMC Sampler
adaptive amount: 0.85
noise threshold: 0.01

Color mapping

... set for linear workflow ala this tutorial http://www.jamesshaw.co.nz/blog/?p=155

------

there you have it. as i said, i have tweaked and tweaked almost all the settings above and could only get it as good as the render above.

also... if you have any suggestions, please use n00b language. this is my first render.

PS i also experimented with various materials. from vray to regular old standard Max materials and the noise/grain was the same.
Darkmalan
02-13-2012, 06:17 AM
Hi,
The first thing I will ask is have you increased the shadow subdivs on the sun from the default value of 8? I usually end up using a value of 32 to get rid of noise.

Do you still get the noise if you use a default grey vray material for every object? I ask this because your yellows look too saturated which could also be causing a noise problem.

Also if none of the above works you may have to lower your noise threshold more. I usually end up using a value of 0.003 and I have seen people go as low as 0.001 but render times obviously do increase quite a lot.

Hope this helps
lonewolfx
02-13-2012, 06:22 AM
hey bud thanks for the response.

after about 3 days of bashing my head against the wall, someone on the Chaos forum pointed out that i shouldn't be using Vray RT as my production renderer.

i switched to the regular Vray production renderer, applied my regular settings and voila. problem completely solved.

this was my first real render so i had no idea what i was doing. oh well, at least it's fixed now!

i will try out your tips though to get good settings from here on out.

thank you.
CHRiTTeR
02-13-2012, 04:52 PM
Why turn anti aliassing off? It'll help you fight the grain (unless you use sharpening filters)

Use higher min subs

Lower DMC sampler's noise treshold
lonewolfx
02-13-2012, 08:04 PM
Why turn anti aliassing off? It'll help you fight the grain (unless you use sharpening filters)

Use higher min subs

Lower DMC sampler's noise treshold

which anti aliasing would you recommend? keep in mind this will be an animation, not a still.

EDIT: my earlier reply hasn't shown up yet so i'm going to say it again here... i solved the problem. the issue was that i was using Vray RT when i should have been using the regular Vray production renderer. when i made the switch it completely cleared up.
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