I've been trying out the new TerraDome3, well I'm getting a lot of pixel noise everywhere. It started with just a few places now it's the whole scene. I rendered last night and closed it before saving it so I have no pic to show. What I was wondering is if anyone know how to fix the noise in the iray settings? Thanks in advance for any advice

Its hard to say without a pic what's causing the pixel noise. Some common things that can cause this are dark scenes, renders that haven't ran long enough or incorrect render settings. When you have a minute try to get a pick of what you are seeing in the renders and it will much easier for peeps to point you in the right direction for a fix.

One thing to try is a variety of different light settings as this will help narrow down the issue.

Well like I said I'm using TerraDome3 which has it's own hdri for the lighting. My settings in iray are under progressive, min samples 0, max samples 12000, max time 20000, and converged at 100%. On filtering I have Noise Filter enabled with degrain filter at 2, degrain radius at 4, and degrain blur at 1. I let it render overnight and this is what I got:

So like I said noob on iray, hopefully someone can help me out, pweeeese

First, what resolution are you using for the actual scene elements? TD3 by default uses "Base resolution" but there is a pull down for "High resolution".

Also, bump and displacement maps do not work well without subdivision being applied.

For convergence, 95% is sufficient for most scenes. For my own work, I cannot distinguish any quality difference between 95 and 100, it just takes 50X longer.

I have no idea what resolution I'm using....LOL can you explain how to find out? I think I need to read a manual or something about TD3...LOL I just jumped in with both feet. Now with my other settings in iray do you think I need to change anything besides convergence? Like I said I'm a noob at all of this, I'm used to poser, but thought that I'd try out ds9, so far I like it, just gotta learn more about lighting and iray. Thanks for helping me out

Terradome 3 comes with an 18 page user guide. You should give it a read thru

Resolution is changed in the parameters tab, as below.

Mesh resolution will not affect noise levels. Bump (and normal) maps don't need SubD or high mesh densities as they don't displace the surface, they just change how light affects it.

TerraDome 3 does include an atmosphere effect - if that is loaded it will slow down the render engine, potentially by a great deal, which may mean your render is timing out before reaching the convergence level (which should not be set to 100% - better to leave it lower, if only a little, and adjust the quality setting).

I would try this...

Under the Render Settings > Editor, go to the Optimization section. In there is a setting called "Instancing Optimization." It defaults to Speed. The pulldown has an option for Memory.

Whenever I have issues like you are, I switch this setting and usually get better results.

Ya'll have been a great help, I took all of ya'lls advice and tried settings suggested (except for sub-d, machine won't do it). I rendered for 13 hours and it was at only 40% done. I've got things to do on the computer so I just canceled the render and I'll start up again later. This is what I got so far:

on the max samples I've got 15000, is that to high? also on max time I have it to 0 so it would render till complete, it think that was a mistake....LOL

Never set to 100% convergence.

You might find some elements of this article helpful: Dark is not the absence of light And my earlier article about lighting with Sun and Sky also applies somewhat (its linked in the above article).

You can ignore the bit about SubD and high resolution, its not your problem.

Your problem is that the image is large and there's likely not enough light here to get you what you want. Environment lighting is great, but its not always going to get you to where you need to be. I suggest adding some spotlights to your characters to give the engine more available light to play with.

Talk about noisy in a different way. I don't remember exactly what I did, but some unusual render settings caused my video card to produce a high pitched squeal.

flibbits posted at 7:29PM Tue, 21 March 2017 - #4299543

Talk about noisy in a different way. I don't remember exactly what I did, but some unusual render settings caused my video card to produce a high pitched squeal.

There is a phenomenon called "coil whine" and effected a lot of EVGA and Zotac Nvidia 970's (EVGA's were especially bad). Normally, it does not interfere with the function of the card. It's just annoying ;). Any electronics can suffer from it really - it's not exclusive to video cards.

Laurie

[cwolfe1971]

on the max samples I've got 15000, is that to high? also on max time I have it to 0 so it would render till complete, it think that was a mistake....LOL

A render stops when one of the end conditions is met. I routinely have convergence set to 95%, iterations set to 50,000, and time set to 30 hours.

Now if the render stops and you don't think it ran long enough pop out the left side panel and increase your iterations, and/or time, then hit continue and your render will resume. If you have draw dome turned on, then you can also adjust the tone mapping, even after the render is complete, without having to rerun the render.