HDR background, finalRender and reflections

[Cozmo]

Hey, I figured it out, I simply applied the background image to the advanced fR material, I wanted the object to reflect both the bg and other stuff around it, anyway it's ok now, I think

[Cozmo]

I didn't want to start a new thread simply because the title would be the same, so here it is

It turned out that finalrender produces really nasty noise reflections when using hdr as an environment map and I can't seem to find a way to make them(the reflections that is) sharper and get rid of the noise. They are noisy, grainy, awful, I tried using a blurred hdr but it didn't help a tad.
Brazil Rio produces great reflections, even the scanline renderer gives better results. The reason I use fR is because I have a material which works well with finalrender and it renders pretty fast, so I'm not willing to "translate it into a different renderer".
So is there any way i can blur that noise?, I tried utrablur, which is really blurring but it's far, far away from being ultra.

Thanks again

[pd]

Be more specific please. Post a picture if possible.

Did you disable the splutterfish hdri plugin(comes natively with max)? If not search for 'HDRI.bmi' - delete it, but make a backup. You can also rename it to 'HDRI.bmi.backup' or something.

Use the Bitmap HDR Map to bring any HDRI file into the material editor. After deleting the splutterfish plugin you've unlocked the respective spinners to change the exposure value in the Bitmap HDR map.

[Cozmo]

I'm really sorry, but I was in a hurry and couldn't post any images :(
thanks for the quick reply but it didn't help, fR keeps on making the same grainy reflections.

I uploaded 2 images one from brazil, one from fR, the problem with fR is more noticeable along the upper-inner(sounds weird I know) edge of the ring and along the outer-upper edge, although it gets noisy everywhere once I make the ring even thinner than that

thanks again

[pd]

I could be wrong, but this looks just like bad Anti-Aliasing to me. Use higher values for your max samples and/or change the filter to Catmull-Rom.

If i am wrong, it would be nice if you could post a render, where the problem is more obvious(take a sphere, instead of this ring).

[Cozmo]

It doesn't appear on spheres just along the edges of rings so far :)
AA is high enough and different filters won't fix it either.

[pd]

Check 'Filter Maps' in the finalRender: Global Options rollout, if it isn't already. If this doesn't work, go to the material editor into the Bitmap HDR map. Try using 'Summed Area' as filtering method there. If this still doesn't work, i'm pretty much stumped :/

You might share the scene and i could take a look at it by myself, if you don't mind.

[Cozmo]

Sure, here it is. No, none of what you suggested worked :(

I really appreciate your help .pd.

[gdimmrt]

I don't think 4 max samples is high enough to eliminate aliasing. Try 16 or even 64. and lowering the treshold value from 3 to 2 might help. So... 1 min, 64 max, 3 treshold.

[pd]

Your welcome, cozmo.

Switching to max samples 16 fixes the problem. I think in this special case the problem also occurs because of the fairly low resolution HDRI you are using. Due to the geometry of your sample object, you get pretty heavy distortion, which could also the reason why all this happens. A higher resolution HDRI could work with even those low AA settings.

[gdimmrt]

Here we go! min 1 max 64 threshold 5. Noise gone!
Upped the AA. The 64 AA is pretty high but im trying to make a point that it's the AA that's doing it.
HDR image is small but not that small that it causes problems.

[Cozmo]

Oh, man I'm really sorry I forgot to include the hdr image, silly me, I'm glad you have :), excuse me again.

Yeah, it sure fixes it but it's so slow now,oh well I'll just have to accept it.
Thanks again for your quick replies, guys :)

next stop brazil I guess

[pd]

The slow Anti Aliasing is one of the (very) few weak points of finalRender. Another one is it's MTD, but this one is adressed in SP3, which will hopefully be available soon.

I can't wait for stage-2 which will come with new AA and a lot more.

gdimmrt: You are right of course. I didn't mean to dispute.

[gdimmrt]

The slow Anti Aliasing is one of the (very) few weak points of finalRender. Another one is it's MTD, but this one is adressed in SP3, which will hopefully be available soon.

I can't wait for stage-2 which will come with new AA and a lot more.

Yes it's slow indeed. I'm looking to SP3 also. Saw the MTD demo at siggraph and it was great! Finally can use Zbrush displacement. I haven't heard anything about stage-2 for max. New AA? Sounds good. But it's still a long way off I'm sure. SP3 will be release in September. Ack, can't wait. But before Stage-2 they are still gonna have to release stage-1 R2.0 for max and that's still a long way off. I'm looking forward to the new GI engine in that too. i'm not holding my breath for stage-2 though. Still a long way off.

[pd]

Stage-1 r2.0? Isn't this Stage-2?

Stage-2 for Cinema4D comes in september and i've read somewhere that it will be out in the first quarter of 2006 for Max and Maya.

Did you also see the Stage-2 presentation on Siggraph?

I'm curious whether the Shader-Tree stuff will also be included in the Max version.

[gdimmrt]

So far I have not heard anything details about Stage-2 for Max. I only know the next release after sp3 is stage-1 Release 2.0 for max. After taht there will be several more "releases" before stage-2 for max comes out. Cinema and Maya's Stage-2 are standalone renderers and are basically stage-1 for max except for programable shaders. According to cebas, we will have to wait for several more incarnations before we can see a shader-tree in max as max doesn't really have a shader tree structure.
Ultimately, the stage-2 for max will be standalone and will be unified with maya and cinema and what ever else they'll be. I hope that by then the interface between max and finalrender will still be tight.

That's all I know so far.

[pd]

I see, thanks for the info.

I've just read the feature list for the Cinema version and thought, we will get similar stuff for Max then. Anyway, let's see what SP3 will bring(i hope more than new MTD).

[Tlock]

If you need to Sharpen or Blur your image use Artizen ZE HDR it can apply hundreds of filters to you HDR images, including working with brushes...

http://www.supportingcomputers.net

or Photogenics

http://www.idruna.com

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