and I started getting severe grain in the dark shadow parts of the forest...(I started hand painting mist to cover for the grain....which starts to look very prodecural)

Can this tree grain be flushed out?

Under Atmosphere editor I punched up the sky, fog, haze "quality boost" up to 8......which kills rendering times...I heard for rendering HDRIs you have to go even hire than "8"...

Can this tree grain be flushed out?
Has anyone else gotten grain in vegatation before? (especially in wide hirez shots)

What light model are you using? I would recommend using GI.
What quality setting are you using in the Light tab of the atmosphere settings? I would recommend boosting this up. What level of ambient light are you using? The more ambient light you have, the more you have to boost this up.
What anti-aliasing settings are you using? For this scene, I would recommend not using any of the standard render settings but instead use "user settings" and manually increase AA to min=10, max=25, quality>85. I would recommend not using texture AA.
Are you using volumetric lights? Volumetric lights tend to produce more grain.
In the render settings, do not check "optimize volumetric lights" and do not check "optimize last render pass". In Vue language, "optimize" means less quality, generally speaking.

These were my base settings..(which ones look suspect?)

LIGHT MODEL: global ambience
Spectral model "god rays out of the box sunset" (quality boost 8)
AMBIENT LIGHT: was at 27%
ANTI ALIASING: 77%  SET ON AuTOMATIC (Ultra)

Could be AA or spectral sunset? (Im used to 2:3 settings in Maya mental ray LOL)

would your recommend AA setting be similar to 2:3 ?

Do you prefer volumetric or spectral.....lights?

Also alot of settings in the Anti Aliasing box....

1. do you use automatic?
2. whats with subrays per pixel?
3. do I mess with texels per ray?

Quote - What light model are you using? I would recommend using GI.
What quality setting are you using in the Light tab of the atmosphere settings? I would recommend boosting this up. What level of ambient light are you using? The more ambient light you have, the more you have to boost this up.
What anti-aliasing settings are you using? For this scene, I would recommend not using any of the standard render settings but instead use "user settings" and manually increase AA to min=10, max=25, quality>85. I would recommend not using texture AA.
Are you using volumetric lights? Volumetric lights tend to produce more grain.
In the render settings, do not check "optimize volumetric lights" and do not check "optimize last render pass". In Vue language, "optimize" means less quality, generally speaking.

Quote - " LIGHT MODEL: global ambience"

I would not use global ambience. Like I said, I would use GI (global illumination), specially if this image is intended at a professional audience.

Quote - " ANTI ALIASING: 77%  SET ON AuTOMATIC (Ultra)"
Ultra has AA on 80%, not 77%. So, you probably mean "Advanced effects quality" is 77%. That's ok but that's more than what you need for this image (there's no advanced effects here). So, that's using up render time without much benefit. I would use "user settings" and place this at 46%, that should be enough for you and will decrease your render time considerably.

Like I said, Ultra has AA at 80%. For this image that's probably not enough (vegetation tends to need higher than that). Like I wrote before, I would go for 95% but you can change that only in "user settings".

Quote - " Also alot of settings in the Anti Aliasing box....

1. do you use automatic?
2. whats with subrays per pixel?
3. do I mess with texels per ray?"

No, I dont use automatic, I use "sharp". But you should try several to see which one you like the best.
Ultra has 4 and 28 as min and max of subrays per pixel. I would say 4 is too low, I would go for 10. I would say 28 is a bit too much but that's ok, just a bit more rendering time.
Texels per ray is for texture antialiasing. That's normally useful only in very special situations, like moire patterns in the horizon or similar. Your image doesnt need that, I would say.

Quote - " Could be AA or spectral sunset? (Im used to 2:3 settings in Maya mental ray LOL) would your recommend AA setting be similar to 2:3 ?"

Sorry, I dont understand what you mean.

Just one note:
Some of the things I wrote above are just the result of my own experience, they're not necessarily right. Probably other vue'ers will have other opinions, equally valid. It's important that you experiment and decide for yourself what fits best in your case. Experiment is the best way to learn. :-)

Paul,

First off, great pic. Looks like your getting the hang of our Vue program in record pace! Nice job.

For a scene like this one, I would try a Spectral atmosphere, and use Global Ambience for the lighting model. It will render much faster-- especially with all the trees. GI, AO, and Radiosity, IMO aren't necessary as they provide subtle shading effects which wouldn't be visible in a scene like this one.

In fact, for those of you who worry about why your scene looks like a small model, and not like a vast vista, I'd make the same recommendation regarding lighting model.

Paul, next in the Fog and Haze tab, there's a quality boost setting which should be pretty high as well, to remove the noise from the light rays. This setting can be a very render intensive and time consuming.

Next try 4 min 8 max subrays / pixel automatic AA at 95%. You may also want to soften the sunlight to something like 5. Sometimes, duplicating the sun and positioning it as a fill light works better than adding a bunch of ambient light (which creates more noise). If you do dupe the sunlight, be sure and use a cool dark color and turn shadows off.

Keep up the good work!

best,
Chipp

PS. I do find it a bit offensive your icon and some of the language you've used in previous comments. Sometimes my daughter, who's not yet a teenager visits these boards. Thanks for your discretion in these matters.

Whoops, I almost forgot. In the AA settings, try jacking up texture filtering to something around 50 and do a small test area render. I believe you may see this helps also in noise reduction-- though it adds significantly in rendertime.

best,
Chipp

One last suggestion. While I know you are an accomplished matte artist, this suggestion may help others reading this thread as well.

In CG, the concept known as 'Specular Bloom,' which creates a blurred glow around the highlights in a photo. It's known in Vue as Lens Blur in post effects. I prefer doing it myself in photoshop and combine it with some other known techniques regarding film photos.

I'm leaving off the film grain component of this discussion as that's a whole topic in itself.

Consider the image below. It's a straight render from Vue w/out any post in Pshop.

After opening it in Photoshop, I'll duplicate the image so I'm always working on a copy of the original. First I'll adjust the color saturation, either up or down just a bit. Usually it's down a couple of points. Then I'll tweak the levels by changing the Input Levels to something like:  23, 239 with a gamma setting of 0.85. This effectively makes the original a bit darker and higher contrast, much like film behaves.

Then I duplicate the layer, and apply a Gaussian Blur filter of around 10 (for 1K image- larger for higher rez, smaller for lower rez) and apply a mode of 'screen' to the layer. Then, many times I'll duplicate the new blur layer and blur it once again with the same settings.

The second image below represents this technique. As you can see, the contrast is bumped-- as in film, and there's now a more blurred halo around highlight areas.

Hope this helps.

This process also helps reduce noise.

Like I said, other Vue'ers have different opinions... :-) Chipp has recomendations very different from my own. Important thing is that you experiment and decide for yourself.
Just some remarks from my side:

Chipp quote - "Paul, next in the Fog and Haze tab, there's a quality boost setting which should be pretty high as well, to remove the noise from the light rays."

I would say this is not necessary in your case. I dont see any noise in your rays.

Regarding Chipp's choice of GA, as opposed to GI, I would disagree because those subtle shading effects of GI can be noticeable from afar, depending on the image.

Chipp quote - *"soften the sunlight to something like 5. "
*Be warned that this will increase your render times dramatically. Furthermore, if the sun is volumetric and you do this, Vue many times (always?) automatically changes the shadow from ray trace to shadow map. This renders much faster but I personally hate shadows generated this way. I recommend that you go to sunlight settings (shadow tab) and disable shadow map (and improve the quality to 1 or above).

P.S.: Like Chipp, I also do not like your avatar at all because it seems directed to all of us here.

Yep, Rutra, you're sure correct about 'no noise' in rays. Good catch there. I still would rather use GA  instead of GI for his scene. GI, unless the quality setting is jacked up pretty high, will create 'splotchiness' or noise in some areas-- areas where there is already quite a bit of noise to begin with-- like the vegetation. So, from a quality standpoint, I'd rather spend the cycles on better aliasing than computing GI.

Also, many times GI can create a large distant object appear to be a small object in a small scene, not unlike how DOF affects scenes similarly. Think of a large space station, or very large building set off in the distance. GI may in fact show affects of reflected light and shading even though none would be visible at that distance. This confuses the viewer into a scale misunderstanding of the scene. Typically, if all scales as applied are correct, this type of artifact may not be noticeable. But, as Vue artists, we generally tend to 'cheat' on our scales, and make building smaller and mountains smaller so to 'fit' in our world scene space.

A nice compromise for this may be AO as you can set the affected distance with it.

I'm not sure I understand your point about sun changing to a shadow map when a volumetric model is used for the sun. In my version of Vue, it maintains itself as a ray-traced light and shadow when set to 5. You might want to check it out for yourself.

Quote Chipp - "I'm not sure I understand your point about sun changing to a shadow map when a volumetric model is used for the sun. In my version of Vue, it maintains itself as a ray-traced light and shadow when set to 5. You might want to check it out for yourself."

Chipp, please do this experience. Open Vue with the default atmosphere. Edit the sun and verify that shadow map is not on. Ok, dont change anything, just close that dialog box. Now, with the sun selected, make the sun volumetric in the object properties panel. Now, edit the sun again and check the shadows tab. In my case, the shadows automatically turn into shadow map. It's not even necessary to make the shadows soft, I was wrong, all it takes is for you to turn the sun into volumetric.
This behavior is even documented in the manual, I found it now (p260). It's a feature, not a bug. :-)

I too have found on occasion that the shadows will change to a shadow map automatically, I just couldn't remember under what circumstances this occurred.
I prefer ray-traced, but I always check my settings anyway so it's not an issue.

Chipp - Do you means Lens Glare? I use this effect alot & I find it improves the quality of the final piece, if you are after that photo effect.

BTW checkthegate, great pic!

Rutra,
I did as you requested, and the sunlight did not automatically turn to a shadow map type. WinXP,
Vue-I: 6.60-04

Hmmm-- funny.

Stormchaser- Yes, Lens Glare. Lens Blur is a DOF field effect in Photoshop. My bad.

Chip sorry about the icon and language. I changed my Johnny Cash "Flipping the bird" to Che Guevera.....

Sorry bout the language to....I have nasty habit with profanity. (to quote General Patton: "When I want someone to remember what Im saying...I tell it to them loud and dirty" LOL (sorry bout that I will clean it up)

I REALLY appreciate the help! Love Terrapack.....!

Really great discussion on rendering!

Quote - Paul,
PS. I do find it a bit offensive your icon and some of the language you've used in previous comments. Sometimes my daughter, who's not yet a teenager visits these boards. Thanks for your discretion in these matters.

Also Chip I have another 2 questions.

1. I am an V6 infinite customer (I should have gotten extreme)...I am thinking of upgrading because I am a HUGE Mental Ray fan. How does V6 extreme integrate with Maya? I heard that V6 still uses its renderer even when integrated into another app.

2. TREES: any special tips on varying those trees up in my pic (they are but broccoli) I have been seriously investing in those cornacopia trees....(they really make a difference) Also with TerraPak ;)

Chip you advice is indespensable

You might want to check with support before getting xStreme. They have had problems with it and some of the packages it hooks up with. I've heard it can work with version X but not new version Y of a specific app, so you should definitely check on it before spending your dollars there. That said, I'm not an xStream user.

Of course, varying the type of trees helps, but there's also another way to vary trees. Change each one's leaf color. There's a bit in the manual about creating a custom textures based upon "Object Center"...see page 492 in the manual. A subtle color shift for your trees ought to create a less homogenous solution.

You can edit the leaf texture of an existing ecoSystem in the second tab of the layers panel.

Here's an example using the cherry tree plant which comes with Vue.
And here's the scene file if you want to see how the texture was created.

Quote - Open Vue with the default atmosphere. Edit the sun and verify that shadow map is not on. Ok, dont change anything, just close that dialog box. Now, with the sun selected, make the sun volumetric in the object properties panel. Now, edit the sun again and check the shadows tab. In my case, the shadows automatically turn into shadow map.

This only works with the Volumetric atmosphere. The default Spectral atmosphere does not change the shadow type.

Chip if your ever in LA....I owe you a $30 martini for all the info!

LOL
Paul

Quote - > Quote - Open Vue with the default atmosphere. Edit the sun and verify that shadow map is not on. Ok, dont change anything, just close that dialog box. Now, with the sun selected, make the sun volumetric in the object properties panel. Now, edit the sun again and check the shadows tab. In my case, the shadows automatically turn into shadow map.

This only works with the Volumetric atmosphere. The default Spectral atmosphere does not change the shadow type.

That's odd - when I tried it with the default spectral atmo that loads with a new scene it changed it to the shadow map being checked.  :blink:

Quote gillbrooks - "That's odd - when I tried it with the default spectral atmo that loads with a new scene it changed it to the shadow map being checked."

Like I said, this behaviour in your system (exactly like in mine) is even documented in the manual (p260, in my case). It's suppose to work this way. I also dont understand why it doesnt behave the same in Chipp's system.

Hi Gill and Rutra,

Turns out I was doing something different that what you all were. I typically double-click on the sun to edit the sun's properties. There, I "Enable voumetric lighting" in the Volumetric tab. I then switch over to the Shadows tab, and I don't see the "Use shadow map" checkbox highlighted.

If, I just click on the Volumetric Light On/Off button, it performs as you rightly suggested.

A long time ago I quit using those buttons, as my experience with them has led me to believe you don't always 'get what you want.' So, I always go into the Light Editor.

My bad. It's a different workflow.

best,
Chipp

Chip,

Im still glancing over that file you posted of the Variations on the Cherry tree...

It is absolutely necessary you vary leaf color...for realism.

I just bought Aisle.fx vegetation DVD....(Im also trying to figure out page 492) I wish it was with trees not little baby earths...

For the variation of the cherry trees did you use the node way?

Paul

Paul,
I personally don't find AisleFX's tutes valuable. GeekAtPlay.com, IMO, is much better.

You should look at the leaf material in the function editor. There you will see how I used a blender node combined with an Objection Center node to subtly change the colors. You can change the scale of the noise node for creating more differences per instance.

To experiment, try editing the blender node so there's 0 amount coming from the regular texture, then edit the color function so it uses a rainbow color scheme, then you can really see how it works.

HTH,
Chipp

I forgot to add, the Cherry tree example will change a single tree's leafset color, and make it a bit different from the next tree. It won't vary the color on individual leaves of the tree. Which should work fine unless you're doing closeup work.

Thanks again Chip....and yes I agree with you....about Aisle FX

I teach a photoreal texture class for the CG society.....and as a teacher myself ...I found Aisle FX REALLY dissapointing.....

Then I found geekatplay and this incredible forum.....(I wish I had my $300 back) LOL

Here's a quick anim gif of how the function works for the Cherry Tree file:

Great stuff Chipp!

Chip I owe you a couple of favors for this...THANKS (And yes you should charge some money for this LOL)

Been trying for hours to figure this out....

Chip,

Got it working. I would have never figured that out.

Procedural nodes make no sense to me.....

(forgive me I come from texture map land. Im used to laying out UVS and plugging in maps...not mixing nodes)

you said there is geekatplay version you did.?...can you link it?......I would like to hear the audio....

Being a Maya user with hypershade....Im stull trying to grasp Vue's version of it....(the function editor)........Its weird how there are there functions on the sides.......in Maya you graph a node and its flowcharted node is all there free floating........(not attached to the walls lol)

I get the blender node...and how its split...
I get what the random node does (although I would have never of found it)
but what does the object center do?

also doing this everytime is a pain in the butt!!!! I got like 3 different trees in that painting

The Object Center generates a different numerical value for each tree as each tree has a different center. That in turn references a different part of the random noise texture, which is linked to a color point in the color gradient. That new color is blended with the old color to give you different colors for the foliage in each tree.

You can change the noise node to Perlin Noises and adjust it's scale factor to get a less dramatic change...plus you can edit the color gradient as well.

This is just a quick anim gif I knocked out. Animated gifs don't support sound, so there is none.

You can always create your own trees with this function map setup and save them, then use them in your ecoSystems whenever you like.

best,
Chipp

That's a great tip Chipp!

Has anyone tried saving new tree files when they've change thte material?  For me it's about as hit and miss as the hooking point before they fixed it.   The mat keeps reverting to the original when I try to save a new species.  Took about half a dozen attempts before it  saved with the new mat   :cursing:

they should have this in the menue.....as a button for vegetation controls.....

it should have nice button "variation"
then another little button "Add Picture gradiant"
then the last button that says "Blend"
(And it makes all these connections for you)

IMHO

this is a very important for realism in procedurals is variying the color of vegetation....

Chipp your support of this program is incrediable....E-on should start giving you some $$....I was getting so fustraited with it ......before your help

Paul,

The actually do have a way of varying the colors, in vegetation, and it's part of the plant description. Take colorful bonnies for instance, they vary when used in ecoSystems. I've a tutorial on how to do the opposite-- keep them from varying:

It's called SolidGrowth Solid and it's at:

http://chippwalters.blip.tv

I wanted to make some of my own color gradients for variations...so I went into the colormap files.......and they are labeld .clr files...

What is a .clr file?

Quote - You might want to check with support before getting xStreme. They have had problems with it and some of the packages it hooks up with. I've heard it can work with version X but not new version Y of a specific app, so you should definitely check on it before spending your dollars there. That said, I'm not an xStream user.

Of course, varying the type of trees helps, but there's also another way to vary trees. Change each one's leaf color. There's a bit in the manual about creating a custom textures based upon "Object Center"...see page 492 in the manual. A subtle color shift for your trees ought to create a less homogenous solution.

You can edit the leaf texture of an existing ecoSystem in the second tab of the layers panel.

Here's an example using the cherry tree plant which comes with Vue.
And here's the scene file if you want to see how the texture was created.

Do you know if this can be done in Pro Studio.  I downloaded the scene but can't figure out how the color variation is accomplished.

Thanks, Jim Gallagher

Jim,

I know it can't be done with Esprit, and I'm not sure about Pro Studio.

I bookmark :thumbupboth:

Mazak

Chipp - You can do some of the editing in Pro Studio - you are limited in the types of nodes you can add.  I figured out some stuff once I realized to click on the materials tab and right click on the cherry tree leaves to bring up the advanced material editor.  Right click on the preview to edit the function.  At this point I got a warning that I would be messing with nodes that are accessible in Infinite only but I clicked OK and was able to edit the nodes.  I deleted the nodes you added and tried to re-create them.  I don't have access to "input" nodes but I was still able to skip that part and generate color variation.  Thanks for doing that animated gif thing - it really helped a lot! 

• Jim