I've noticed that in rendering pictures with high levels of ambient light, say with HDRI based lighting, that noise can be become problematic.

I've tried experimenting with more anti-aliasing, increasing the quality slider in the atmosphere editor, and upping the advanced effects quality slider in render options.

So many articles discussing render settings are about how low you can go and get away with it, whereas I think I'm looking for which setting gets me the cheapest increase in quality by turning it up.

As always, I have to caveat the question by pointing out I'm using Vue 6 Pro Studio.

Much less noise in Vue7 I must say.

noise is best defeated by improving the render settings, so go to user settings, edit it, and then...you're in the arms of the gods ;) everyone has their own faves, me I don't care about render speed so much as quality

I'd recommend small renders, with no radiosity, just standard light, and see what you like, by increasing the max # of rays or texels, or quality.
higher settings DO have a big impact especially on large complex renders, render times become slow, but can look a hell of a lot better.

but, just ramping up numbers doens't always = better by huge amount.

Hi Mark,

I've done quite a few HDRI renders and some turned out very well, I'm not sure of the differences between Vue 6 Pro Studio and Vue 6 Infinite, but I could send you some screen shots if that would help.

Chris

I'm surprised you're getting noise with HDR lighting. Do you use radiosity? Maybe you could post a screengrab....

doing some tests for this :)

ok this image
took 4 minutes to render on SUperior, notice, even with superior sitll get noise

Ok, Steven, but the noise I see in your first render comes from the soft shadows of a Vue light, I think, they are not produced by using an HDR, or am I completely wrong?

Normally, I would have cranked up most settings and waited, but as always, it's those Lazloi reflective ships that throw a spanner in the works.

I was not using radiosity, so perhaps I should move up to Global Radiosity.

I've attached the section showing the 'pock-marks' on the characters face.

Oh, Ok I see better now. This looks to be quite a low quality render, what are your settings? Final? And yes, I think this comes from the ambient lighting. In this case, I would crank up the GI slider to +1, or add a small point light to light up the face, and move the ambient/sunlight slider a bit over the sun (even if there is no sun, this will allow Vue to take the light coming from the point light to be used in the lighting solution) And I'd recommend radiosity for this.

User settings

46% Quality in the render options

0 quality in the lighting tab

Global Occlusion

8 - 12 anti-alias with 100% quality

I've restarted the render with Global Radiosity, 12-24 anti-alias

I run Vue 6 Pro Studio also Mark and when I use HDRI I turn the Fog and Haze from Very Low to Completely off.
Render setting quality 70%. Some will say that is too high, but I don't mind 50 hour + renders. I also use a 30% to 70% or 20% to 80% Sunlight to Ambience or somwhere in between. That way I can more control the soft shadows. I never use more than 8 to 16 sub rays and 95% Quality there.

Thanks Thelby,

I might abort the new render and try some of those settings.

Interesting to compare 46% versus 60% on the advanced quality settings slider.

Bruno
aye that was just spectral sun, to show soft light noise :)

mark
hair from Poser is improved by adding bump, I link the colour channel to bump maybe -.01 strength , and setting highlights to white, maybe 30 30% for strrngth, move anisotropic slider all way to the right :)