Attached is a detail from a WIP created in V5 Infinite. I'm just wondering how I can reduce or eradicate the grainy lighting effect seen especially on the foliage. I suspect it has to do with the lighting I have used ( I seem to remember it was global ambience and I biased the lighting towards more sunlight and less ambient light ). I've noticed this graininess before in images I've made - any help to produce a sharper, less grainy render would be much appreciated.

Two things that can contribute to a grainy image:

1. volumetric lighting.  if you use it, you better kick up the quality of it.

2. render settings.  if you want a great quality looking render, choose ulitmate and a dpi setting of 300 or higher.

hope this helps.

 

G&C

There must be something else here, because reducing ambient light normally takes away the grain. But as Gary said, if you used volumetric lighting or atmosphere, you need to bump up the quality  slider up to 2 minimum.

What are your render settings? Final is not enough, but ultra is too much. Go for user settings, with 46% advanced effects quality boost, and min9 and max 12 for AA settings, with 60% quality.

Thanks for the help and suggestions - will try out those settings and see if things improve!

Please take a look at my tutorial on Vue render settings. There are a lot of different things that can cause grainy renders...

http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/Vue_Render_Settings.pdf

Peggy

Peggy, thanks for the link to your tutorial. Very useful and plenty to try out! Thanks for sharing it.

Attached Link: Help with Vue 5 Render settings

I freaked out with vue 5 i's grainy renders...but soon found some settings that take care of that and keep a great render speed too! :)  Link attached, hope some of my fixes will help too! :)

Lyne

Hmmm I not only upgraded my reader, I STUDIED your settings and am going to see if your pdf can help me get rid of PATCHES in my water... I have SUCH trouble with vue's water looking real, and if I dare put something (a ground, dirt material under water in a pond) I get the most terrible patchwork quilt of water - that only appears upon rendering!

Thanks for your help...I need to save a copy of your pdf, as it is much more extenisve than my little screen caps! :)

Peggy_Walters - Thanks alot for the tutorial, some good tips there!

When i get a grainy looking image, the first thing i'll check is the sunlight and it's setting in the top right corner called "Softness". Even a softness setting of 5.00° gives me already a grainy look, so i usually make sure, the value is set at 0.00° for a clear render.

Or there could be trouble in calculating with a texture, that is scaled too small compared to the size of the object/terrain.
Well, at least that's what i believe could be two reasons for a grainy result ...

Setting softness to the sun doesn't produce grainy renders. This parameters creates 5%( or more) softness in the sun's shadows, meaning that the shadows of objects get blurred the further they are from the ground. You need a fair amount of AA to get rid of the noise artifacts this parameter creates, but it's easy to resolve.

Okay, I am only using Vue Easel, so I don't have all of those goodies to tweak.  I do agree with everyone else about lighting and have found the color of the volumetric light seems to be one of my most serious problems.  I can add a spot light and change the color in the affected area to reduce some conflict.

The other tweak I do is change the camera angle in relation to the ground plane, to find an angle that does not produce so much pixelation.

I don't think all this was about pixellation, I don't see pixellation in the posted render. Anyway, would be good to know what sandman has come up with.

Quote - Two things that can contribute to a grainy image:

1. volumetric lighting.  if you use it, you better kick up the quality of it.

2. render settings.  if you want a great quality looking render, choose ulitmate and a dpi setting of 300 or higher.

hope this helps.

 

G&C

Gary,
My impression is that dpi has nothing to do with the render, only the final resolution chosen. You can change the dpi from 72 to 300 to 1200 without changing any rendered data in an image in Photoshop. DPI is only useful for printing and can always be modified on the fly at a later time.

best, Chipp

I should have said, my images get what appears to be pixelated, in the reflections some objects and especially water scenes.  The higher the DPI I use the softer the pixelation, it does not remove it.   Maybe it is the way the software renders, or dosen't.