I have Vue xStream 8.4 and 3dsMax2010+SP1.
I have made some animations with Vue Plants that responses to the behavior of the wind (sweet Breeze).
I have used the default setting for antialiasing: Min 1/4 Max 4, FinalGather: Draft.
I have lowered after, the settings to: Min 1/64 Max 4; this because the rendering time is about 8' minutes per frame and I want speed it to render a sequence of 800 frames.

• But after the rendering in mentalray with 3dsMax2010 I decided to turn off the wind-breeze because a lot of aliasing over the leaves of the plants such "bulky conifers" and "large cone shaped conifers".

• Anyone have a good suggestion about to solve this aliasing problem over the plants leaves?

• I have seen the e-onsoftware demoreels of Vue, and it is impressive the quality of the antialiasing with millions of plants!
  How that is done in 3dsMax?

Thanks!
Horsepower0171.

I'm not sure you really mean aliasing, but maybe flickering?
If aliasing, you need to up the AA quality in Max, since AA is taken care of by Max and not Vue to ensure the same level of AA on all elements in the final render.
If you mean flickering, which I think it is, because it always happens in animations, you need to use separate render settings, to enable texture anti aliasing and texture filtering in the Vue render settings. Use 33% texture filtering, or use an animation render preset (starting from "Broadcast") Use texture AA only if you also see some flickering in Vue procedural materials (such as barks, terrain materials...) Texture AA will add render time, so use it only if necessary. Texture filtering doesn't add much render time and is mandatory for rendering animations.

Quote - I'm not sure you really mean aliasing, but maybe flickering?
If aliasing, you need to up the AA quality in Max, since AA is taken care of by Max and not Vue to ensure the same level of AA on all elements in the final render.
If you mean flickering, which I think it is, because it always happens in animations, you need to use separate render settings, to enable texture anti aliasing and texture filtering in the Vue render settings. Use 33% texture filtering, or use an animation render preset (starting from "Broadcast") Use texture AA only if you also see some flickering in Vue procedural materials (such as barks, terrain materials...) Texture AA will add render time, so use it only if necessary. Texture filtering doesn't add much render time and is mandatory for rendering animations.

OK!
I rendered a test scene of my "Villa 01" Architectural Vue Project.
I seen that the overall plants renders ok, with TextureFiltering to 100% !

• Too much? 33% instead? It is a test...

• But the flickering still appears over the bark and branches of "Cone-Shaped Conifer" Plants that have poor leaves. These plants are at the end of my video, just a little bit over the river...

• What are the good parameters for Texture AA? The default values are good?:

• Texels per Ray: Min: 4 Max: 12; Quality Threshold: 40% -

• Or should I use the "Ultra" settings?:

• Texels per Ray: Min:4 Max: 20 Quality Threshold: 90% -

I used as 3dsMax parameters for mentalray "ImagePrecision-AA" the value of Min:1/64 and Max:4
In this manner the time for rendering is not too much long.

• Is also this parameter critical for avoid the flickering over the Vue Plants?
  I ask this, because I don't want too much time to finish the rendering...

The video is at my website:
http://www.cavallodario.it/Homepage.html > TopMenuBar>"Sezione3D">"3dsMax": it is the first video in the page on "Architectural" section.

• At the end frames, the flickering over the plants, just a little bit over the river, is very fastidious!

Help!
Thanks!
Horsepower0171.

I made some test scenes, with the "Cone-Shaped Conifer" plant; one with TextureAA on, and one with Texture AA off.
But the result is the same!

I selected TAA>Texels per Ray>Min:4 - Max:20; Quality Threshold:90%, the same  as the "Ultra" settings, but nothing changes !

I also leaved "ON" the "Antialiasing" as default, in the AdvancedMaterialEditor for all the leaves of Cone-ShapedConifer Materials; and increased the "TAA boost" to +4 (maximum).

But this "Cone-ShapedConifer" default plant is too much crisp, as opposite to the others, such "BulkyConifer", that is very smooth with TextureFiltering=100%.

The "Cone-ShapedConifer" with TextureFiltering=100% and the increased TAA is not smoothed at all!
It causes flickering also with all options actived!

• How can I do to avoid flickering?

I think of replace plants with "BulkyConifer" instead of "Cone-ShapedConifer"...to solve this problem.
But I want try the TAA, prior to delete the plants!

Help!
Horsepower0171.

Texture filtering only smoothes bitmaps. Texture Anti aliasing smoothes procedural materials, like the barks of those trees. If you set Tex Filtering to 100% it will smooth 100% all texture maps in the scene, but not the tree barks (this was just to be precise). Now, what is strange that one of the conifers flickers, and not the other, I looked at their materials, and they use the same material, so I'm lost! If the Bulky doesn't  flicker, then copy/paste it's material onto the Cone shaped and see if the flicker is gone.

I copied/pasted the Trunk and Branches materials from Bulky to ConeShaped Conifer plant.
I increased the TAA boost to +4 for leaves1, leaves2, trunk and branches materials.
I enabled the TAA parameters as "Ultra" settings in the Rendering Options.
But the result is the same! Nothing changes.

I think that the problem is not over trunk and branches materials (procedural barks).

I have seen  with 3dsMax RAM Player viewer, the previous/after renderings:
The problem seems to be over the too crisp leaves, not over the barks.
Also with TextureFiltering 100%, the smooth is not enough over ConeShapedConifer leaves and they flickering...
Any suggestion?

Horsepower0171.

Try removing the bump function for the leaves.

OK!
It seems that removing the Bump of Leaves the flickering disappear.
I made some tests and I am satisfied for smoothing.

But I decided to replace the Cone-ShapedConifer with BulkyConifer, because this specie of plant has more leaves, and the leaves are more tick and dense; this appears more appropriate for plants along the river.

• But after the complete rendering of the last 150 frames (that taken about 15 hours), I seen bad artifacts at the borders of BulkyConifer !
  See the attached image.
  I am unlucky !
  These artifacts appears as bad behavior of alpha channel, but I am not sure what is the cause...
  Help!
  Horsepower0171.

Seems to happen only when the colour behind the plant is white (the house). I really don't know about this one. You should go to e-on's site and see if this has happened before, by checking the Technical support page. If you can't find an answer, then open a support ticket.