I've bin argueing with some people about wich render-quality that was the best to use. They said that broadcast weren't better thank final. It only applies "Motion blur" and nothing else. I have made some few tests and I've found that Broadcast is almost as good as Ultra and way better than final. The broadcast render was twice as fast as the Ultra render and 3 times slower than final : Final : 1 min - 20 sek. Broadcast : 4 min - 5 sek. Ultra : 9 min - 39 sek What do you think? Thomas--

Hi Thomas !

Indeed "broadcast" quality is much better than "final". "Broadcast" introduce motion blur but it also has a higher anti-aliasing setting than "final". Here are a few examples (the thumbnails on the top right corner are 200% zoom of the base of the glass object).

The "maximum" image is a render with the best quality available in VUE (superior anti-aliasing / 25 subrays per pixels / 100% best quality threshold).

• In "final" quality the aliasing is very strong.
• There is no noticeable differences between "broadcast", "ultra" and "maximum".

So always select "broadcast" rendering, it's as good as "ultra" but the rendering time is faster. In fact the difference between "broadcast" and "ultra" only appears when there are soft shadows in your scene : soft shadows need a very high anti-aliasing setting, otherwise they look noisy and grainy.

:) Eric

Hi Eric. I'm glad there's somebody out there that agree with me :) The test is very well done! Thomas--

Just a little follow up to what audity said. In most cases I agree that there isn't any need for higher render quality settings. However, with volumetric lighting effects and especially with soft shadows, the higher your quality settings the better the results. This is a test scene I did a few months ago with one quadratic spot with a light gel and one regular spot with softness set to 15 degrees rendered in Broadcast.

Rendered in Ultra.

Rendered with User Settings, 25 subrays per pixel, Quality Threshold up about 3/4.

I agree with Axe. Broadcast is fine as long as you don't use any soft shadowing and/or light gels, or if you can live with grainy images. But only with user settings will you be able to exploit the software the best--at a price, mind. (hello 3h render jobs.) ta, -Sascha.rb