Hello,
Anyone from planetside can post the render settings of
"Cloud Peak animation by Martin Huisman, aka Tangled-Universe" on
http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/60/98/
I Think Cloud peak animation is most flicker free animation i have seen till now in this forum.
Actually i am rendering an animation of 72 farms and i have tried every possible render setting from this forum. But i still see flickers in animation.
Here is few render settings i have tried and rendered 2 or 5 frames so i can see the results. But no flicker removed.
---------------------------------
Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 4
GI 4
GI Blur 200
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------
Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 80
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------
Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 40
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------
If any body can put me in the right direction for the flicker free animation that would be great.
miqtidar
Hi Miq,
I designed that scene and with help of Oshyan we worked out the best render settings for this scene.
I explicitly say "this scene" because rendersettings aren't 1:1 transferable between scenes/projects.
At the moment I'm not at home, but I'll try to provide you with some info asap as I don't know it by heart.
Maybe it used ray traced atmosphere already :) I can't remember exactly anymore.
Hopefully it will be of any use.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Tangled-Universe I will be waiting....
Thanks alot
I believe you need to try with GI 0 and perhaps Oshyans fill light setup
There have been a lot of discussion about the flickering matter so I also suggest you try the search function to find them.
GI was actually used in that render, we just use suitably high settings. Not being able to see the results of your tests I can't say for sure what the problem is as there are several types of "flickering" that might be occuring, some caused by GI or other lighting issues, some caused by displacement "popping", some from aliasing, etc.
I would suggest changing your AA filter to Mitchell-netravali or even Cubic B-spline; results from the latter will be a bit "soft" but generally for animations you won't be able to preserve a ton of fine detail upon compression anyway, and sharp edges can result in artifacts and further aliasing. The AA filter can have a much bigger impact than the level of AA itself in many cases.
AA9 should be fine for most scenes, in fact it may be overkill. I think I used between 6 and 8 for the referenced mountain animation.
At any rate if you can show some comparative clips with accompanying settings or even just an image to show the kind of scene, that would help us give better, more specific advice. Motion clips would be best though.
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan for reply by reading your post i got some new ideas to try.
Any way here is the settings. And I am also Posting 2 frames in jpg format you can view both together in image viewer or fchek to compare the results.
GI
Detail 1
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 200
Bucket 128
Box
Detail Blending 1
Displacement filter 1
I setting is too slow for rendering animation plus I still see shadow pops and lighting pops.
thanks.
The strata shader is pretty heavy in regard to displacements.
To be honest I think a scene like this is at the moment close to impossible to render with reasonable speed.
Set GI strength to 1 and sampling to 6. Keep the blur. Reduce AA to 6, because 9 is not necessary I'd say.
Make sure your atmosphere samples are high enough. Are you using raytraced atmosphere?
If so, and you're using AA6 then use 32 samples.
If not, use 64 samples.
Now with these settings the atmosphere artefacts should be near zero.
Flickering and other issues are then likely to be caused by the heavily displaced terrain.
You then might try to increase the displacement tolerance in the planet node from 1 to 2 and then render a couple of frames.
Maybe you can post your project file here so we can try some things ourselves?
That would speed this process up.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks alot Tangled-Universe,
That was great help. I will try it tonight. And post some samples here.
Okay I am posting the TGD file here for guys to give a try.
I am looking for clean renders like we shot it on camera.
Hello Tangled-Universe,
I have rendered 2 frames on your Recommendation and plus keeping some of previous settings, here are those settings.
---------------------------------------
Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node # 1
Atmosphere Number Of Sample # 64
Render settings
---------------------------------------
Detail # 1
AA # 6
GI relative detail # 1
GI sample quality # 6
GI blur radius # 200
Ray Trace Objects # Checked on
Supersample # unchecked off
Pixel Filter # Cubic B Spline (Soft)
Anti-Aliasling bloom # Checked on
Detail blending # 1
Displcement Filter # 1
---------------------------------------
I still see some of flickering, I am also posting the 2 frames so you can see yourself. I am going to render 2 more frames with Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node with 2 and post more images.
Actually i am looking for Flicker free results.
Do you think this flicker is from GI or Displacement Tolerance or I need more GI sample or I need more Atmosphere Sample.
Thanks,
miqtidar
Hi miqtadar, seeing the images and TGD really helped a lot. I am currently running some tests and I think I have some good results for you, but I am not sure of the render time comparisons, which is the only problem. Can you post another TGD that includes the render settings you used for either the original 2 images or the 2 you posted most recently? My results are a bit different, for example I am at Detail 0.5 (based on your original settings post), and I suspect you are rendering at higher detail based on the images you're posting.
I can tell you that none of the suggestions so far will fully solve your problem, but if you give me another 24 hours or so, I can probably give you a TGD with stable results.
- Oshyan
Hello Oshyan, Thanks alot for helping me out.
Yes i am rendering on very high quality settings Time is not the issue with me i am after the quality of images from Terragen , Imean Production like shots from Terragen.
I read from the people posts on this forum Terragen 2 had lot of flickering issues in animation.
And now after talking to guys and figuring out the rendering issues and removing flickers from my animation.
My opinion is changing about Terragen.
Its not Terragen which have issues its your settings and the patience you have to wait for excellent quality to be produced by Terragen.
Any way Here is the TGD file from recent post.
miqtidar
Hey guys here is another render i have done it took 9 hours and few minutes to render only 2 frames.
Off course result is improving and i think i am almost close to flicker free video.
Here is my new settings.
---------------------------------------
Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node # 2
Atmosphere Number Of Sample # 128
Render settings
---------------------------------------
Detail # 1
AA # 6
GI relative detail # 1
GI sample quality # 6
GI blur radius # 200
Ray Trace Objects # Checked on
Supersample # unchecked off
Pixel Filter # Cubic B Spline (Soft)
Anti-Aliasling bloom # Checked on
Detail blending # 1
Displcement Filter # 1
---------------------------------------
I only increased
Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node to 2 and Atmoshpere Number Of Sample to 128.
Flicker is almost removed except few parts of the frames.
New frames render are attached.
miqtidar
I have all but resolved this problem. I should have a TGD for you later tonight. And, unless your system is much slower than mine, it won't take 4.5 hours per frame. ;) It's important to note that in this scene atmosphere samples will have a *minimal* effect. More to come...
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan,
I will be waiting.
Try the attached. Still may need a little work, render time might be able to be reduced (hopefully), but it's better than the last test file you gave me and certainly better than 4.5hrs/frame. ;D
More details to follow.
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan,
Can you tell me why did you change these settings detail blending to 0, Lock subdiv to frame 35, size of cache to 800, and Ray detail region to detail in camera and ray detail region padding 0.5 also GI perpass detail to 0.5.
It will be great learning for me if i understand your settings.
Thanks again oshyan.
I'm not sure about the "lock subdiv to frame", never used that before.
Normally the detail blending function blends the differences in subdivisions of the displacements in between frames.
However, since detail blending is set at 0 I presume the locking of the subdivision to frame 35 means that the displacement at frame 35 is fixed and used for further calculations.
The region padding is a function which calculates subdivisions or GI outside the rendered region.
The ray detail region padding calculates subdivions outside the camera frustum which may affect shadows and reflection inside the camera frustum.
The GI region padding works the same, but then for GI.
In case it says "in camera" it means that the padding will be applied outside the complete camera-frustum.
In case it says "in region" it means that the padding will be applied outside the cropped region.
The number, 0.5 in this case, means that 0.5x outside the camera frustum subdivision and GI is being calculated, for each side of the image.
So, if your image is 400x400px and you enable the ray detail region padding or GI padding with 0.5 then these functions will calculate it as if the image is 800x800 with your 400x400 image centred.
This way you can kind of blend GI and/or shadow contributions from preceeding and following frames.
Martin
As I mentioned before, I'll add more details on these particular settings soon. It turns out, after rendering 21 frames, that there was still some flicker in the most distant geometry (at the top of the frame), which is almost certainly caused by GI. I'm investigating and will post a further tuned version without that element of flicker later today, along with a full explanation of the settings used.
- Oshyan
Alright, this was a really interesting challenge because of the specific nature of this scene. Getting flicker-free results is sometimes not too hard, and in fact I had assumptions about this scene before I started tweaking it that turned out to be wrong. I got 99% of the way there within the first day, but there are some very subtle interference patterns that I believe result from stretches in the texturing and how the scene is constructed, and those were really hard to get rid of without totally blowing up render time. Fortunately I think I've arrived at something that should work well. I attached a TGD above that works pretty well, though not 100% perfectly, and I'll explain what I did below for your benefit and others.
My first assumption was that, because this scene does not involve any objects, antialiasing should not be very necessary. Usually with terrain and displacement it is the Detail setting that most affects smoothness. However in your case, due to the high frequency patterns *in* the texturing, increasing AA to rather high levels became necessary. I finally settled on AA12. This worked better than very high main detail (1.0) because it renders faster and still eliminates the aliasing/moire. That being said the 0.5 scene detail version is less "clear" and "sharp" than some of yours, so you may wish to increase detail and possibly decrease AA.
One assumption made earlier in this discussion that was wrong (and I never expected to be right) was that atmosphere samples had something to do with the noise. There really is no indication of atmosphere undersampling here, so I'm not sure why that came up, but it definitely was not a solution. In fact my final version has *reduced* atmosphere samples to 12 and it still looks fine.
Another incorrect assumption on my part was that lack of soft shadows would be contributing to some of the aliasing, but in fact adding soft shadows had only a very minimal visual effect, and it was not particularly an improvement.
You'll note that the GI settings are not particularly high, and they don't really need to be. 1 for relative detail and 4 for sample quality. It's Sample Quality that is usually the most important for flicker reduction. I also put blur at 25 and turned on Supersample Prepass (GI) as this can help avoid GI inconsistencies.
The AA filter also had a minor but noticeable effect. I ultimately settled on Mitchell-Netravali because Cubic B-Spline was too soft given the detail level used. With a detail of 1 Cubic B-Spline would look better, but still may be too soft. I did not find C B-S to particularly help the flickering in this scene, but in some cases it is a better option.
Both the Jitter settings are on (Microvertex and Detail). However often times these can cause variations between frames, so they may not be desirable in animation.
Now here's the real critical stuff I did:
You have "popping" in shadows and GI, especially at the edges of the frame. This is usually caused by geometry that is out of frame not being calculated with enough detail. The Ray Detail Region Padding and the new GI Prepass Padding settings both allow you to increase the quality of off-camera calculations so that the in-camera scene is correctly and consistently affected by these unseen elements. For example, if a mountain that is off-screen casts a shadow onto the foreground, without some padding this shadow may not show up at all, may show intermittently in an animation, or may just render otherwise incorrectly. The padding settings allow you to adjust how much is calculated outside the camera's view. Of course this increases render time, but note that it does not have to fully render the regions outside the camera, it just performs the calculations necessary to determine off-screen element's contribution to shadow casting and global illumination.
Ultimately you needed both Ray Detail and GI Prepass padding. Both these settings control extensions to the calculation beyond the camera view *as multiples of the area of the camera view*, and on all 4 sides. So in other words if you set it to 1, it will extend the calculated region by an amount equal to the camera view area in all directions, resulting in a calculated area 3 times wider and higher than normal. For this reason usually lower values, such as 0.5, are fine. I used .25 for both, meaning the calculated area ends up being 1.5 times larger in left/right and up/down directions (0.25 extension on each side). Lower values might even have worked, but I arrived at these quickly and the render time contribution was reasonable.
Another important setting was Lock Subdiv to Frame. What this does is "lock" the geometry subdivision/generation *for ray traced geometry* (i.e. geometry generated for shadow casting and reflections) to a particular frame of an animation, which means the shadow-casting geometry isn't going to change between frames. This only works for small camera movements though since the geometry is calculated for 1 specific frame, and if your perspective to that geometry changes significantly, the detail may no longer be sufficient from what was calculated on the frame chosen. I've picked Frame 35 in this case as it's about half way through the animation, so this basically means the geometry is accurately calculated for the middle frame and accuracy decreases earlier and later in the sequence. The benefit of this vs. frame 1 is it distributes the inaccuracy more evenly throughout the animation, so that the end frame is not *really* off (which would happen if you set it to Frame 1).
Notice also that Detail Blending is *off* in this case. It should normally be used in animations, even though it increases render time, it did not seem to make much difference in this case, and increased render time fair amount so I left it off. As noted, I would recommend using it in almost all normal animation cases, though it may be worth testing a few frames with it off if render times are too high.
Finally, I used some advanced settings controlled in a special node that is not yet accessible in the UI. I've included it in the TGD for reference, it's called "Render subdiv settings 01" and it allows you to control some more specialized renderer settings. Generally these should not be messed with, but I believe it helped in this case. When we make this node more easily available we'll include documentation that fully explains what each setting does, but for now it will have to remain somewhat vague as I don't know precisely what each setting does (I arrived at these setting based on past recommendations from Matt and some experimentation of my own).
So there you go, I hope that explanation helps. We'll be working to improve renderer output stability over time, but with the right settings things are already very good. Many other renderers deal with similar issues when in motion (e.g. GI flickering) and there are many strategies (such as frame blending) to deal with them in post. Sometimes it's better just to address smaller issues after rendering, rather than crank up all settings and having each frame take forever.
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan,
Sorry i am replying late i was busy.
That was such a great help and very detail reply.
Thanks again.
I am rendering animation from your settings and soon i will post it online for more improvement.
Sounds good. By the way I realized after posting that the TGD attached above was actually not quite correct. The render_subdiv_settings node needs to be *inside* the render node to work. So I'm not sure if those settings are actually helping in this case, or whether they would in fact help if you enabled them (by cuting/pasting the node inside the Renderer node's internal network). Worth a try to see if it can improve things even further.
- Oshyan
Hello Oshyan,
First Of all I was very busy doing other things and never had a time to explore scene file you had posted, bu i did mange to render half of the animation, and it took almost 2 days continues rendering on i3 acer note book which had 4 threads. When i will finish render i will post online to view.
Thanks.
Here is the link of the video
Kindly turn HD On for good quality
https://vimeo.com/51313277