Jagged Arnold shading regardless of Arnold render settings

#1

Hello

It’s my first posting here and I’m in desperate need of help with a buggy Arnold rendering problem, which could not be solved on the Autodesk Maya Shading forum. I cannot upload attachments yet as a new user, so I’m trying to define the problem in words as clearly as I can:

The problem encountered is no matter which AA, SSS and light intensity value I set, the boundary between light and dark appears jagged.

Concerning the lighting system, I have a primary area light in front of and to the left of the object of focus, sub area light in front of and to the left of the object and the back area light behind it. Moving these area light objects around didn’t change the shading edge either.

It would be appreciate if anyone could help me make the shading edge smoother.

Thank you in advance.

#2

You could upload an image to google drive and share the link here - ?

Anyway, if your bright area has values well above 1.0, then AA may not be able to get rid of the jagged edge.

As an experiment, try setting your lights to a fraction of their value, so that the render is grey instead of white, then see if that jagged edge is now smooth.

If that fixed it, all you need to do is dim the total render value until it’s closer to 1.0, whether it’s by dimming the lights, or the material. You could use the clamp setting but that causes problems

#3

Here’s a visual of what I’m saying, this is zoomed into any diagonal or curved shape in a render.

Super-bright values cannot be visibly anti-aliased, because AA finds the middle-ground between the two areas to fill in the corners with, so anti-aliased pixels still end up above 1.0.

Max brightness of 1.0 anti-aliases fine ;
AA-at1

The mid-ground of a bright render is still 2.0, so it all looks solid white, right up to the black area, so it looks like there’s no AA ;
AA-bright

#4

Thanks for the tips! That is most insightful.