How can I remove that damn grain...

[9thCrux]

I have been trying to render some daytime scenes and the film grain keeps bugging me:


I'm trying to make my renders look sharper and the grain is getting in my way as far as I can tell.

What settings can I use to remove the grain and give my renders a sharper look?
I would appreciate some help pls.

 

[Katgza]

maybe this could help?

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[9thCrux]

maybe this could help?

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Thanks, I will look into it.
Hardly ever browse the Daz forums, maybe I should start...

 

[NoesisAndNoema]

Hardly ever browse the Daz forums, maybe I should start...

Forgive me, because this is going to sound a little on the "harsh side" of tone, but I assure you that it is not being typed with harshness in mind... To you. Any harshness is just frustration with Daz and Iray.

Yes, you should... You are beyond the point of, "Play with it, until it works." AKA: Discovery. (Which Daz3D does, right out of the box.)

Short answer to your question... Your lighting is insufficient and HDR is screwing with your render.

"Resolve" of a pixel is determined by how much light/photons have illuminated the "surfaces" contained within that pixel. The less light you have, or more HDR removes that light... The longer it takes to resolve, making a LOT of noise/grain in an image. The only solution, without changing the lights, is forced render times beyond the 100% resolve.

Each photon that "fills a pixel", is a "correction" to adjust the light for better accuracy potential. Though, that sometimes fails. You can watch it add noise back, after it takes it away, on long renders.

HDR is a computerized evaluation of the scene, as a whole, to auto-adjust for lighting. Similar to how your eyes work. In darkness, your iris opens more, to consume more light, to "see the scene". In bright light, your iris closes more, to block and reduce bright lights, so you can "see the scene".

However, HDR is shit, and always has been. Want to see what I am saying, turn it off and hit render. That is what it is attempting to "resolve", into "something you can see". Looks like it is doing good, except for the fact that Daz and Iray both have blown-out and incorrect lighting settings, to reality. The HDR tries to "fix it", and results in shitty renders. Shitty, but good enough to use, in most cases. Better than giving everyone a shit-load of settings, which they don't know how to manipulate. Which usually leaves everyone guessing, when real-world values fail to produce something that resembles reality.

The endless fight with HDR... The more you crank-up the light, the more it reduces the light in the scene. Defeating the purpose of light control. (Though, it only does that to a point, like how your eye has limits. However, they are using "digital device limits", not "human eye limits". Which should be an option, but it isn't.)

I suggest that you increase the light and use a more appropriate lighting setup. (The dome is crap, try using sun/sky settings. It is worth setting it up to your actual "location", so it simulates what you, as an individual, where you live, would expect to see. The default location is some stupid location that is not suitable for most renderings.)

The HDR dome is more for "artistic drama lighting", it has horrible back-lighting and an ambient light that simulates a bright overcast day, which is unrealistic. It is either bright (cloudless), or overcast (ambient and cloudy), not both. Replace the default HDR scene with a real one, a professional one that Daz didn't just google and turn into an HDR image to play with, from a NON-HDR image-set.

Now it is time to do some learning, and stop trying to "discover" solutions, from the source of users and programmers, AKA: the Daz forums. Daz and Iray are not exactly intuitive. They both require some modest to advanced levels of knowledge for greatness. Knowledge which is not only specific to 3D, but also to real-world information, beyond computers. (Lighting for sun/sky/sources. HDR reactions which simulate your eyes. Camera settings, related to ISO speeds, grain, exposures, iris, focus, blur. Decorating for scenes, with lighting and structures. Color-balance and color-theory, to determine what makes a "good looking" scene/render.)

 

[FunFiction]

What settings can I use to remove the grain and give my renders a sharper look?
I would appreciate some help pls.

More light or use smart ghost light
If you want renders stop when Renderig quality and rendering converged ratio reach their values, set this:

Max Samples: 12000 or above - it doesnt matter, just prevent to stop render before quality and Coverged ratio stops it
Max Time (secs)- 22000 but not less- just prevent to stop render before quality and Coverged ratio stops it
Rendering Quality : 2 or more - reduces noise
Rendering Converged Ratio: 95 is enough

 

[9thCrux]

More light or use smart ghost light
If you want renders stop when Renderig quality and rendering converged ratio reach their values, set this:

Max Samples: 12000 or above - it doesnt matter, just prevent to stop render before quality and Coverged ratio stops it
Max Time (secs)- 22000 but not less- just prevent to stop render before quality and Coverged ratio stops it
Rendering Quality : 2 or more - reduces noise
Rendering Converged Ratio: 95 is enough

Smart ghost light and rendering coverage ratio are two things I'm not familiar with, need to look into those things.

And yeah I was changing the rendering quality, samples, and max time.
I changed the glass transparency to make it look like frosted glass, normal people don't live in glass houses they could get sue for indecent exposure XD I was making an early morning shot with a rising sun but it seems that the background light creates more noise.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[FunFiction]

Smart ghost light and rendering coverage ratio are two things I'm not familiar with, need to look into those things.

And yeah I was changing the rendering quality, samples, and max time.
I changed the glass transparency to make it look like frosted glass, normal people don't live in glass houses they could get sue for indecent exposure XD I was making an early morning shot with a rising sun but it seems that the background light creates more noise.

Thanks for the tips.

Rendering Quality : 2 or more - For me it reduces most of noise
Rendering Converged Ratio: 95 is enough - if you give some bigger number here the render time could become insane

 

[stiglet]

"Convergence quality estimate
At some point the progressive rendering will have reached a quality where subsequent frames will not have any visible effect on the rendering quality anymore. At this point rendering may stop. This can be based on a convergence quality estimate that can be computed in the non-interactive rendering mode. This estimate can be controlled with the following parameters: a quality parameter that determines when a pixel is considered converged, and an overall converged pixel ratio.

The following attributes on the

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class, shown here with their default settings, control the convergence quality estimate:

bool progressive_rendering_quality_enabled = true
The convergence quality estimate is only available in the non-interactive render mode and can, in addition, be enabled and disabled with this attribute. If disabled, rendering will not stop based on the convergence quality and no progress messages will be issued for the current convergence quality.

mi::Float32 progressive_rendering_quality = 1
A convergence estimate for a pixel has to reach a certain threshold before a pixel is considered converged. This attribute is a relative quality factor for this threshold. A higher quality setting asks for better converged pixels, which means a longer rendering time. Render times will change roughly linearly with the given value, i.e., doubling the quality roughly doubles the render time.

mi::Float32 progressive_rendering_converged_pixel_ratio = 0.95
If the progressive rendering quality is enabled, this attribute specifies a threshold that controls the stopping criterion for progressive rendering. As soon as the ratio of converged pixels of the entire image is above this given threshold, Iray Photoreal returns the final result for forthcoming render requests. Additionally, the render call will return 1 in this case indicating to the application that further render calls will have no more effect. Note that setting this attribute to a value larger than the default of 0.95 can lead to extremely long render times.

The convergence quality estimate has some computational cost. It is only computed after some initial number of samples to ensure a reasonably meaningful estimate. Furthermore, the estimate is only updated from time to time."

This was taken from a Iray programmer's manual at

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Hope it helps

 

[pystudios]

Sometimes it helps to hide the ceiling and let the sunshine in, as long as it's not in the render. as a matter of fact hide everything that's not in the render to spend up the render. Adding lights or creating light props as suggested work but I prefer the ready made spotlights, you can treat them as a camera using the drop down menu for cameras and put the light where it's needed then select it and change the lum to about 80,000 and the temp to about 9500, add about 2 of those with the ceiling gone and the grain should also be gone, just in case you may want to render a 2x the resolution then do a noise filter in photoshop for dust at 1 then change the resolution size and save. btw the noise filter in Daz doesn't work so don't bother with it. Oh and change the spot light height and width to 100 and make it a disk shape / oval or something like that.

 

[9thCrux]

Sometimes it helps to hide the ceiling and let the sunshine in, as long as it's not in the render. as a matter of fact hide everything that's not in the render to spend up the render. Adding lights or creating light props as suggested work but I prefer the ready made spotlights, you can treat them as a camera using the drop down menu for cameras and put the light where it's needed then select it and change the lum to about 80,000 and the temp to about 9500, add about 2 of those with the ceiling gone and the grain should also be gone, just in case you may want to render a 2x the resolution then do a noise filter in photoshop for dust at 1 then change the resolution size and save. btw the noise filter in Daz doesn't work so don't bother with it.

What? The noise filter in Daz doesn't work? Damn.

Thx, I will try your advice, been very busy lately to practice scene building and lightning setups but hopefully I will have some time soon.

 

[pystudios]

In case you do not know how to hide things, in the normal view in Daz on the right hand side there is a pane docked hopefully, (if not you'll want to dock it) called Scene, in it will have all the props, characters, lights, camera, etc... and an eye to the left that you can turn off and on, there is also a collapse/drop down on some items like maybe the room or house in which you can turn off everything that's not in the render to speed it up like walls that are behind you or to the side of your render and adjoining rooms. If you, I think right click on the Tab "Scene" you can create your own group which is helpful if you're doing a project and will be returning to the scene again. Create a group and drag all the props and characters, cameras, etc... you need into the group. If they were already in the room or what ever you may need to do nothing but when you add an asset then drag it to the group you'll not the parameters went from X0, Y0, Z0 to something wild maybe X-213, Y114, Z614 so just zero or rest those and it'll show up in the room. Delete the rest of the assets outside the group provided you saved at least a scene with the entire house and now save your room ready for fast renders.

 

[9thCrux]

In case you do not know how to hide things, in the normal view in Daz on the right hand side there is a pane docked hopefully, (if not you'll want to dock it) called Scene, in it will have all the props, characters, lights, camera, etc... and an eye to the left that you can turn off and on, there is also a collapse/drop down on some items like maybe the room or house in which you can turn off everything that's not in the render to speed it up like walls that are behind you or to the side of your render and adjoining rooms. If you, I think right click on the Tab "Scene" you can create your own group which is helpful if you're doing a project and will be returning to the scene again. Create a group and drag all the props and characters, cameras, etc... you need into the group. If they were already in the room or what ever you may need to do nothing but when you add an asset then drag it to the group you'll not the parameters went from X0, Y0, Z0 to something wild maybe X-213, Y114, Z614 so just zero or rest those and it'll show up in the room. Delete the rest of the assets outside the group provided you saved at least a scene with the entire house and now save your room ready for fast renders.

Interesting, a good way to save render time and memory. I will probably do that for each room in the in-game house then I can scene build faster...

Usually I just hide elements I don't need to render but they still there using memory.

 

[pystudios]

Yes you may have to unparent the room from the house before you delete the rest of it but it does load a lot faster and you'll have more memory for the render.