Daz What the hell am I doing wrong in DAZ?

[boboqwe]

Hi everyone. Can anyone help me?
I'm using the default render settings with a maximum of 2000 samples.
The images are incredibly noisy.

 

[boboqwe]

I understand that the noise is due to insufficient lighting, so I add spotlights and pointlights, but the noise is even worse. The noisy image stops after 100 samples.

 

[GamesMtP]

Hi everyone. Can anyone help me?
I'm using the default render settings with a maximum of 2000 samples.
The images are incredibly noisy.

It's pretty common to denoise renders. Either you can use the built-in denoiser, or an external post-render. People seem to favor Intel's denoiser.

 

[boboqwe]

It's pretty common to denoise renders. Either you can use the built-in denoiser, or an external post-render. People seem to favor Intel's denoiser.

Could you tell me the settings for the built-in denoiser? I watched a tutorial a long time ago, but I can't remember.

 

[GamesMtP]

Could you tell me the settings for the built-in denoiser? I watched a tutorial a long time ago, but I can't remember.

Post denoiser available ON
Post denoiser enable ON
Post denoiser alpha OFF

Post denoiser start iteration: Back in the day, it was a good thing to start this pretty late. As far as I know, and from my own testing, these days it makes no difference for the end result or render time when you start it. I start it from iteration 1. The advantage with the built-in denoiser is you can very early get a good look of what the render will look like. Some things like reflections takes some iterations to pop though.

But using the built-in one means less control. You can't compare denoised/not denoised, or built-in denoiser compared to external ones.

 

[boboqwe]

Post denoiser available ON
Post denoiser enable ON
Post denoiser alpha OFF

Post denoiser start iteration: Back in the day, it was a good thing to start this pretty late. As far as I know, and from my own testing, these days it makes no difference for the end result or render time when you start it. I start it from iteration 1. The advantage with the built-in denoiser is you can very early get a good look of what the render will look like. Some things like reflections takes some iterations to pop though.

But using the built-in one means less control. You can't compare denoised/not denoised, or built-in denoiser compared to external ones.

Thanks, friend. I'll try using it from the first iteration and compare. I decided to see what kind of beast this Intel® Open Image Denoise is. It's complicated for me. Libraries, drivers, etc.

 

[boboqwe]

I can't understand why some environments produce perfectly good renders, while others are terribly noisy. And it doesn't depend on the polygon count. In this scene, the environment is litle weight.

 

[Richard Fappington]

What GPU are you using and are you restricting to GPU render with no CPU?

I understand that the noise is due to insufficient lighting, so I add spotlights and pointlights, but the noise is even worse. The noisy image stops after 100 samples.

Try supplementing with emissives instead of spotlights and point lights.

Below is what I've been using for a while and have been happy with it.
700 max iterations, render quality enable OFF

 

[MissFortune]

I can't understand why some environments produce perfectly good renders, while others are terribly noisy. And it doesn't depend on the polygon count. In this scene, the environment is litle weight.

Reflections, windows, glass, mirrors, etc. They're all noise traps. Trying to calculate will drive up render times hard and will often still result in a noisy render. Lighting also plays a big role, so maybe take some time to fiddle with that and learn it.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the post-denoiser for everything but animations. Adjust your Max Samples according to your render quality. 1080p = 1500-2300 Samples, 1440 = 2400-2800, 4K = 3000-5000. 4K has a bit more room to play with, though. If render is still noisy after those, then use an external denoiser such as DnD denoiser by Taosoft.

 

[boboqwe]

What GPU are you using and are you restricting to GPU render with no CPU?


Try supplementing with emissives instead of spotlights and point lights.

Below is what I've been using for a while and have been happy with it.
700 max iterations, render quality enable OFF
View attachment 5299336

Thanks, I'll try your settings.
Yesterday I tried enabling the built-in denoiser. It didn't help.
And what do you call it emissives?
Is it like adding a primitive to a scene and giving it the ability to emit light?

 

[boboqwe]

• What GPU are you using and are you restricting to GPU render with no CPU?
  
  
  Try supplementing with emissives instead of spotlights and point lights.
  
  Below is what I've been using for a while and have been happy with it.
  700 max iterations, render quality enable OFF
  View attachment 5299336

What GPU are you using and are you restricting to GPU render with no CPU?
This is something I don't understand at all. I'll look into it.

 

[boboqwe]

Reflections, windows, glass, mirrors, etc. They're all noise traps. Trying to calculate will drive up render times hard and will often still result in a noisy render. Lighting also plays a big role, so maybe take some time to fiddle with that and learn it.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the post-denoiser for everything but animations. Adjust your Max Samples according to your render quality. 1080p = 1500-2300 Samples, 1440 = 2400-2800, 4K = 3000-5000. 4K has a bit more room to play with, though. If render is still noisy after those, then use an external denoiser such as DnD denoiser by Taosoft.

Thank you very much for your advice. In my case, the sample count is 2000 at 1440 resolution. I'll try increasing it as you recommended. However, in some scenes with glass and mirrors, renders are less noisy with fewer samples. This environment lacks glass, etc., but the render is noisy. When I try to add spotlights, the noise increases, although in other scenes the noise disappears when I increase the number of spotlights.

 

[AllNatural939]

Even if you don’t notice it, everything reflects light. Skin, eyes, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the objects in a room. We’re not just talking about things like mirrors... everything.
A ray of light goes from point A to point B because it’s aimed straight there, but then it bounces to point C and then to D... The more lights you have, the worse it gets. The more objects in the scene, the worse it gets, the more characters, the worse... That’s why no two renders are ever the same. The amount of noise depends on the number of lights, the number of objects in the scene, the number of characters, the number of surfaces reflecting light and to what degree they do it... That’s why you don’t get consistent results, because it’s never exactly the same.

 

[Richard Fappington]

Thanks, I'll try your settings.
Yesterday I tried enabling the built-in denoiser. It didn't help.
And what do you call it emissives?
Is it like adding a primitive to a scene and giving it the ability to emit light?

Correct. That is one way to do it. I also recommend this product: https://f95zone.to/threads/iray-ghost-light-prop-kit.127359/

 

[MissFortune]

Thank you very much for your advice. In my case, the sample count is 2000 at 1440 resolution. I'll try increasing it as you recommended. However, in some scenes with glass and mirrors, renders are less noisy with fewer samples. This environment lacks glass, etc., but the render is noisy. When I try to add spotlights, the noise increases, although in other scenes the noise disappears when I increase the number of spotlights.

This is precisely why knowing how to light is such an important skill in 3D, or videography/photography for that matter. Two and three point lighting see such strong usage for that reason. Knowing how to light efficiently will cut a lot of noise, enough to make a denoiser still put out a decent result without destroying visual fidelity in the process.

This breakdown of The Social Network is basically a masterclass in how to approach lighting in a scene, imo. Though they do fail to bring up the abundant use of light blockers to force shadow into their broadsides (Notice the big black square above Eisenberg's character, there's also likely one to their left for each character.)

 

[boboqwe]

Thanks so much for the advice; I realized I need to look into lighting.
I also think I'm unlikely to be able to eliminate all the noise in this environment using an RTX4060 laptop. So, I'll transfer the scenes to an environment without the leather walls. In the attached images, I experimented with the lighting and tone mapping settings, but I still couldn't achieve the result I wanted.

 

[iDTerra]

I can't understand why some environments produce perfectly good renders, while others are terribly noisy. And it doesn't depend on the polygon count. In this scene, the environment is litle weight.

The scene is fully closed, so all the light rays keep bouncing around. It also has a lot of light sources. A few things you can do though, here is a render at 500 iterations:

Without changing the scene itself, you can turn on Guided Sampling, now noise resolves faster at 500 iterations, but it does take longer to render:

Setting Nominal Luminance to 200 gets rid of some more bright pixels:

There is still noisy spill from past the end of the hallway. This is just my experimenting, but I put in a section plane on the left and two spotlights to mimic the lighting in the original scene, then turned off every light except for the ones at the hallway's ceiling (which was set up like ghost lights for some reason so I've also converted that):


The resulting lighting is less noisy, although not an exact match. The bar of light on the ceiling looks thicker due to the changes in surface settings, but entire scene now has more contrast and specular highlights (see belt, speaker).
But the character's face is still noisy, due to bounced lighting from the floor and walls. An extra light there doesn't really help:

The rest of the image is very clean already, so I personally would just spot render the face to 5000+ iterations and call it there. In this case, it would be a lot of work to diagnose and eliminate the noise on her face, and OIDN without an albedo pass will lose a lot of detail.

 

[MissFortune]

Thanks so much for the advice; I realized I need to look into lighting.
I also think I'm unlikely to be able to eliminate all the noise in this environment using an RTX4060 laptop. So, I'll transfer the scenes to an environment without the leather walls. In the attached images, I experimented with the lighting and tone mapping settings, but I still couldn't achieve the result I wanted.

Well, the 4060 in a laptop will be a killer. But it's probably the equivalent of a 1080 desktop card if we ignore the heat, so it should be workable. A common technique is to render out a noisy version of the render, and then denoise it externally (so you have both versions of the render), then you'll take them into photoshop and blend as necessary, like so:


This allows you to typically render with any amount (there's a limit) of noise and you'll be able to get a clean result without totally destroying the quality. No matter what software you use, there will be some quality degradation, but it's better than the opposite.

Edit: Renders for reference:

 

[boboqwe]

The scene is fully closed, so all the light rays keep bouncing around. It also has a lot of light sources. A few things you can do though, here is a render at 500 iterations:
View attachment 5303203
Without changing the scene itself, you can turn on Guided Sampling, now noise resolves faster at 500 iterations, but it does take longer to render:
View attachment 5303205
Setting Nominal Luminance to 200 gets rid of some more bright pixels:
View attachment 5303206
There is still noisy spill from past the end of the hallway. This is just my experimenting, but I put in a section plane on the left and two spotlights to mimic the lighting in the original scene, then turned off every light except for the ones at the hallway's ceiling (which was set up like ghost lights for some reason so I've also converted that):
View attachment 5303235
View attachment 5303229
The resulting lighting is less noisy, although not an exact match. The bar of light on the ceiling looks thicker due to the changes in surface settings, but entire scene now has more contrast and specular highlights (see belt, speaker).
But the character's face is still noisy, due to bounced lighting from the floor and walls. An extra light there doesn't really help:
View attachment 5303264
The rest of the image is very clean already, so I personally would just spot render the face to 5000+ iterations and call it there. In this case, it would be a lot of work to diagnose and eliminate the noise on her face, and OIDN without an albedo pass will lose a lot of detail.

Bro, try rendering in the Leather Room.
In the Red Room, I achieved a result I was happy with.
But I ended up moving the scene to a different environment.
And I've already seen some benefits. The scene renders in 18 minutes instead of 30. And it doesn't require any post-processing.
I rendered a room with leather walls using IrayGhostLightPropKit.

 

[boboqwe]

Well, the 4060 in a laptop will be a killer. But it's probably the equivalent of a 1080 desktop card if we ignore the heat, so it should be workable. A common technique is to render out a noisy version of the render, and then denoise it externally (so you have both versions of the render), then you'll take them into photoshop and blend as necessary, like so:


This allows you to typically render with any amount (there's a limit) of noise and you'll be able to get a clean result without totally destroying the quality. No matter what software you use, there will be some quality degradation, but it's better than the opposite.

Edit: Renders for reference:

View attachment 5303321 View attachment 5303323

Could you tell me what program you're using at the beginning of the video?
This is what it means "technique is to render out a noisy version of the render "?
You might think I'm being lazy, but that's a lot of work to do with just one render.
But if you're doing 500-600 renders, this method won't work, at least not for me.