On stage

[Hannes]

Thank you, Masonspappy!!

Nitpick: looks like bongos on right are floating?

Nope! See attached image. The congas are on a stand.

[masonspappy]

I "Stand" corrected !

[Hannes]

[Dune]

You have a way with language recently

[Hannes]

An open air situation. I added a lot of more lights (by hand!!! ), and of course a lot of people. I spent quite some time posing characters (lo res for the background and higher quality for the foreground) to make the audience look like they're having fun.
Unfortunately I couldn't get rid of the noise in the light beams. I could have used even higher quality settings, but I was afraid of the rendertimes...

[Dune]

Aweseome, it really shows they're having fun. Crowd is great too. Too bad about the grain, it's probably a heavy metal band playing rough sounds. Did you try to reduce the pixel noise threshold? I mainly use AA6, but almost always have to reduce the PNT to 0.03 to loose the grain with the robust sampler, even with cloud quality at 1 or 2.

[Hannes]

Thanks Ulco!! No, I haven't tried yet. I gotta admit that I haven't really understood this pixel noise threshold thing so far, but I'll try. Thanks for the tip!

[Hannes]

Hmmmm... my PNT WAS already at 0.03...

[Dune]

Then maybe you had AA8? Noise is often a problem, I have to admit. Atmo samples up? Though I wouldn't know what the atmo would have to do with such close-up scene....
ah, maybe one of the light variables should be turned off, I just remembered. Glow? Shadow?

[Hannes]

Then maybe you had AA8? Noise is often a problem, I have to admit. Atmo samples up? Though I wouldn't know what the atmo would have to do with such close-up scene....
ah, maybe one of the light variables should be turned off, I just remembered. Glow? Shadow?

Well, I had AA9. Do you mean, I should decrease to 6 to get less noise?
And I think turning off glow or shadows wouldn't be very helpful, since they are crucial values for this kind of image. However, I know, that additional lightsources were always quite problematic in terms of noise.

[Hannes]

OK, I just set AA to 6 and found that the PNT automatically changed into 0.05. So I'll render the next one (another stage view of the last open air scene) with AA6 and PNT set to 0.03. Let's see, if this helps.

[KlausK]

Hi Hannes, ! ROCK ON !

Remember this?

https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,23919.0.html

There were a few discussions about spot lights and visible light cones back then.
This was my take at it. Perhaps that helps...

CHeers, Klaus

[Hannes]

Oh thank you, Klaus! I forgot about this thread. Or maybe I missed it. The idea of multiple spotlights at the same location with different settings producing almost noise free light cones sounds fantastic!


I have 76 spotlights in this scene....

...maybe I'll denoise it in post...
Anyway thank you! It's good to know next time I'll do something with (way less) spotlights.

[Hannes]

So I'll render the next one (another stage view of the last open air scene) with AA6 and PNT set to 0.03. Let's see, if this helps.

Well, it didn't really help. I decided to denoise the light cones in post.
Additionally I created a bump map for the cymbals, which made them look more real. And I added some food and a beverage. This wasn't my best decision, since this bloody pint took me more than 3 hours to render! Only the beer!! However, it showed me, that the prospect of beer makes me quite patient.

[Dune]

Wow, terrific! Crowd is even bigger so it seems. Too bad about the noise, but post works. The beer is worth the waiting time!