Noise in Rays

[PeterParker]

Hello,

i have a question why i get always noise in the sunrays ?
If you look at the picture you know what i mean:

My settings are:

Atmo: 128 samples, Raytrace Shadows on, Adjust to distance on, Sample Jitter: 1
Clouds 180 samples, Sample Jitter 1, Ray fuzziness: 0 (Dont know what tis means), Step optimisation: 0, Acceleration Cache: Optimal, Enable Ray Traced Shadow: on
Render Quality: 0,89 , AA 7 , Ray Trace Objects: on and off, GI relative detail: 3, GI sample Quality: 3

I´ve tried everything i know but i get always the result you see in the rendered file:

Does anybody have a clue how to solve this issue?

Best regards

Peter

[cyphyr]

It won't solve your problem but RT shadows ON is only useful for surfaces casting shadows onto atmospherics, not atmospherics casting shadows onto atmospherics. So for a mountain to cast a shadow onto a low cloud have RTS on but for a cloud to cast a shadow onto/within the atmosphere leave it off, it will only add to your render time. That said sometimes it is useful to hide sunlight sources.

Richard

[PeterParker]

Hello Richard,

thanks for this hint 

Thought RT on is always good cause of hiding the sun behind Mountains or other objects.

Any other solutions ?
Maybe the ATI 5800 Series makes this artefakt only?

Regards

Peter

[cyphyr]

Absolutely NOT related to the graphics card/chip set. Nothing in Terragen is.
Richard

[freelancah]

Have you tried 256 atmo samples? If not I'd try that and see what happens

[PeterParker]

Hi Freelancha,

thanks for your tipp but Oshyan has recommended: For atmosphere samples I wouldn't go above 64 unless you have lots of rays, in which case you might go as high as 128. Don't go above that though as you get diminishing returns for very much longer render times.

So i havn´t tried this. Maybe i should do a testrender.

Any other tipps ?

Regards

Peter

[Henry Blewer]

Load the image into a paint/photo manipulation program. Duplicate the image into a new layer. Mask out everything in the new layer except the ray. Add a little blur to this layer, then use a filter to merge the two layers so it looks how you want it.

It's sort of a cheat... But Hollywood cheats this way often.

[Oshyan]

I would suggest for now rendering an atmosphere-only pass with Raytrace Everything (in the Extra tab) enabled, and set cloud detail to 1, atmosphere samples to 32, and AA to 3. That should give you lower noise. If it's still not good enough increase atmosphere samples to 64. Then render a terrain only pass and combine the two. Once 2.2 comes out, if you're a registered user, you will have access to a "Raytrace Atmosphere" option which would be perfect for this kind of image, as it should reduce render time while improving noise levels.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

That's good advice from Oshyan!

I'd like to add to the discussion that the use raytracing is justified if the source of the rays is occlusion by terrain.
If so, then wonder yourself: are the rays created by the volumetric cloud or by the atmosphere or perhaps by both?
Once you have figured this out you will understand what to use.

But richard (cyphyr) is right when the rays are indeed created by occlusive clouds. You wouldn't need any type of atmosphere/cloud raytracing because the shadows (read "rays" here as well) are not cast by surfaces.

[jo]

Hi Richard,

Absolutely NOT related to the graphics card/chip set. Nothing in Terragen is.

In the case of actual rendering, as is the case here, you are right.

However the 3D Preview and shader previews (and to a lesser extent the network view) the graphics card could have an effect as they are drawn with OpenGL, so it isn't really right to say nothing in TG2 is related to that.

Regards,

Jo

[PeterParker]

Hello Oshyan, Jo and Tangled Universe,

thanks a lot for your help!

Do you think the 3D Card i´m using could be the fault? Cause when i render the same scene with a NVIDIA card the noise is much much weaker, nearly clear.
The new option render Atmosphere is the right thing i need. And as a registered user i hope this feature will come with the next update.
Is it possible to download the update via the check button?

Many regards to all the nice helpers :-)

Peter

[PeterParker]

I would suggest for now rendering an atmosphere-only pass with Raytrace Everything (in the Extra tab) enabled, and set cloud detail to 1, atmosphere samples to 32, and AA to 3. That should give you lower noise. If it's still not good enough increase atmosphere samples to 64. Then render a terrain only pass and combine the two. Once 2.2 comes out, if you're a registered user, you will have access to a "Raytrace Atmosphere" option which would be perfect for this kind of image, as it should reduce render time while improving noise levels.

- Oshyan

Ok, i found a solution !  
Atmosphere Quality Samples : 100 and AA to 8, Render Quality: 1 (Max Samples Non Adaptiv), a little bit of Blur: 1,5
I´ve to redo the clouds cause they look very shady
But these settings works fine for me but the rendertime increases a little bit ...for now 3 Hours and still goes on  

Thanks all so far for your great support  

[Oshyan]

The graphics card has no effect on rendering quality or output. As Jo said, it only affects the 3D preview, shader previews, and network view. Final rendering is dependent entirely on the CPU.

- Oshyan