Hello,
I hope someone knows a way around this. :)
Here's the problem :
I have a scene with only one spotlight that has a light cone effect (without 3d shadows or turbulence).
The result is disappointing : the light/color gradient is not smooth (it is specially visible over the black background). It's quite subtle on the sample below, but it's no good because I need a very big render. I have selected the best quality for the light and the render settings. How can I get a smooth transition ?

Thx !!!

Hi Balaenanun, Ahhhh, smooth gradients - the holy grail of photographers, artists, designers and printers everywhere. ;) This may not actually be an issue in the final render. Save the render settings of your current camera in the render room so you can easily plug them back in. Then create a new camera in the assembly room and create a frame in one of the problem areas and render at full resolution in this new area. Then check out the render and see if the problem is still there. It may be less of an issue at full rez. Will you be printing this? Honestly, smooth gradients are almost impossible to reproduce in any software including Photoshop and Illustrator. I'll usually throw in a little noise in Photoshop to erase any banding that is going on. Additionally, you can use the Photoshop filter "Remove Dust and Scratches" pretty effectively to eliminat banding. There are some other tricks to try but these are the easiest. Mark

I also have a shader/shadow problem :

Does anyone know what can cause this unsmooth shading in the black area ?
There are several lights, only one casting shadows, the black shader is black color+some shininess/glossiness.

Thx !

Thx Mark, I'll try your tips :) !!

Yes, it's for printing. I have rendered it at 4000x3000 and it's the same.

I remember having gradient problems in Photoshop itself, you're right, I shouldn't be expecting a smooth gradient here ^^ The problem is, the difference between the grays makes it impossible to remove with my friend the Gaussian blur :P I'll try more filters, like you said.

Thx again,

Bala

The easy photoshop fix is to duplicate the image on a new layer and then add about 7% noise to the entire image. Then youcan mask off the whole layer and use a soft paintbrush to reveal the noise fix on top of your image. It's really seamless that way. In fact I usually duplicate the original layer itself and add a little noise just to ease the blend. On the black areas for the image above, I'm not sure I see what you're seeing. Are you looking at the floor or the robe? Mark

Thanks for the precise Photoshop fix !! I'm sure it will often come in handy :)

About the second picture, I was talking about the robe, the highlights/shadows are not smooth... Maybe I should make an image map with some texture to fix this... I have tried a noisy bump map but it's not enough. ^^