Noisy Animation

Started by dorianvan, March 02, 2017, 11:14:39 PM

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dorianvan

Anybody know how to get rid of noisy animation?
Det.7, AA10, 1/16 first samples, PNT=.02
Narrow Cubic, Microvertex jitter/detail jitter off
GI: cache detail 6, sample Q 6, blur 8, Supersample/GISD on
-Dorian

Matt

First I would change the pixel reconstruction filter to Cubic B-Spline (soft) or Mitchell-Netravali, and see if that helps at all.

I don't know what exactly is causing the noise on the buildings, but it doesn't appear to be the lighting so I suspect it's the textures (which Terragen doesn't prefilter). But you have noise in the vegetation as well, so if the pixel filter doesn't help then you'll need to increase the minimum samples. 1/16th adaptive at AA10 usually doesn't give enough minimum samples for vegetation renders. Even though the pixel noise threshold is low, it doesn't guarantee that it will recognise all noise. You might need to use 1/4th and AA 12 or higher, unfortunately. But I would recommend testing whether the pixel filter makes any difference first.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Oshyan

Woah, that's some noise. Are you using imported/photo-based textures on the buildings and all that stuff? What about the background terrain? Because there's a bit of noise even there. It's confusing me a bit. Making me wonder if we're missing the real source of noise here...

Is Defer Atmo enabled? What are the atmo samples?

- Oshyan

Hannes

Couldn't that be a GI issue too? Have you tried using a GI cache? If detail blending in the Render subdivision settings is set to 0 (default), try 1. It will take longer to render, but maybe it helps. You could also play with the ray detail region settings under the advanced tab.

Oshyan

I don't think any of those should cause noise issues in this case.

- Oshyan

dorianvan

#5
Thanks for responding,
@Matt: I'll try Mitchell and up the min samples first, then up the AA if that doesn't work. Rendering now.
@Oshyan: Yes, they are imported jpg textures for all of the objects. Is there a TG problem regarding jpg textures or their sizes? The background is something Ulco did for me, I haven't tackled yet why the mountain shadow is changing shades, not sure about that yet. I did set the strength on surfaces to 2.25 to brighten them up some (problem?). Defer atmo/cloud is enabled, atmo samples = 10
@Hannes: I rendered a cache every 5 frames (because there's lots of foreground grasses) and interpolated every 5 as well. Detail blending is already set to 1, and RD region padding is .5
-Dorian

Oshyan

As Matt said, textures in TG are not prefiltered. So I'd try disabling the textures as a quick test. If the noise is minimized/gone, then we need to figure out a way to fix your texture aliasing. That would be good to know.

- Oshyan

KyL

Interesting. I thought that "smooth interpolation" in the color or displacement tab texture was actually a texture filter of some kind.  ???

dorianvan

#8
The filters made very little difference regarding the noise. With the materials, I went as high as AA14 and detail of .8, and it was still noisy. Without the materials I added a light surface layer, then re-rendered. There was no dithering of noise on the object, foliage only slightly noisy. My materials (jpgs) range from 200K to 36MB, does the number of mats used or the size of them matter?
-Dorian

Oshyan

Mainly you want to avoid using larger textures than necessary. Aliasing can occur when there are more pixels in the texture than are needed to represent it in screen space in the final render. You might also test without 3D motion blur as that greatly increases the needed number of samples for noise-free results. 2D motion blur may be adequate, either in TG or in post.

I'll talk it over with Matt and see if there are other options and things you should try.

- Oshyan

dorianvan

Didn't know that using larger textures than needed causes aliasing. I did change all of my materials to under 1MB each, but that did nothing to change the noise. However, the culprit is a "dirty" node. It dirtys up my ruins. When it's off, the aliasing is gone. The problem is I like the dirtiness factor. Any ideas on settings I could try?
-Dorian

cyphyr

I did wonder if it was a very fine displacement causing the noise but hadn't thought of it being a PF. Can you lower the displacement value (or have it off and just use the dirty colour)?
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dorianvan

I'll give that a go, thanks.
-Dorian

Matt

Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

dorianvan

Didn't try the octaves, but removing the displacement removed the noise on the textures. Thanks Richard. There's still a bit of noise in the bushes, but not enough to worry about. There is a problem with the mountain changing colors (my GI is 6,6,8 and blending 5 files) and the black house at the top, which only happens when I add the "dirty" node. Not sure about either of these two yet.
-Dorian