Grainy PBR w/ ray tracing is killing me

[Redmumba]

I've read all the posts about ray tracing on here, and I'm not even seeing anybody post similar images. I'm seeing EXTREMELY grainy images on a relatively simple plan. Granted, there are a fair amount of reflective surfaces (i.e., glass, tile, etc.), but this is still way worse than I'd expect. I have it set to 1500 samples. You can see graininess throughout the image. Honestly, I'd use more samples if it helped (the 3080 RTX is beefy enough) but while the first few samples definitely remove most of the super obvious graininess, the light-specific stuff is extremely noticeable.

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

Full image (w/ materials and unused purged) is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wi8trxphczvr6lc/Post Plan.zip?dl=0 (it's about 17mb)

[Redmumba]

Even more obvious when looking directly at lights. Barely any difference between 50:

 

 

And 1500 samples:

 

[robdyck]

You should save your camera views and create a light set. A light set should be created for each room or each camera that will be rendered.

You'll then need to edit the backdrop, sunlight, lighting, rendering techniques and materials.

I created 2 cameras, saved them. I did change a few materials.

 

[SusanC]

Chief just released a series of training videos on Ray Tracing done by Kayla Lockhart.  She is a trainer at Chief and I've taken several one on one sessions with her for PBR and she is a wealth of knowledge!  The new videos are located on the Chief website with the other training videos.  I think these will help you to adjust the lighting and the sunlight.  Good luck!  

[Redmumba]

4 hours ago, robdyck said:

You should save your camera views and create a light set. A light set should be created for each room or each camera that will be rendered.

You'll then need to edit the backdrop, sunlight, lighting, rendering techniques and materials.

I created 2 cameras, saved them. I did change a few materials.

 

Actually, I think I accidentally deleted the cameras when I was cleaning things up, but I did have a few saved. I've manually adjusted the sunlight and things like that, including reducing the intensity et al. The backdrop is definitely something I need to work on, unfortunately. Also, thank you so much for sending me the link to the modified plan! Just out of curiosity, what materials did you change?

 

4 hours ago, SusanC said:

Chief just released a series of training videos on Ray Tracing done by Kayla Lockhart.  She is a trainer at Chief and I've taken several one on one sessions with her for PBR and she is a wealth of knowledge!  The new videos are located on the Chief website with the other training videos.  I think these will help you to adjust the lighting and the sunlight.  Good luck!  

Yeah, I've looked at the training videos, but it looks like this is an actual training session--at least, I couldn't find one from Kayla. At least according to these videos, I've done what they've suggested (i.e., adjusting sun luminosity, etc.), but there are still the issues that I see above.

[robdyck]

3 minutes ago, Redmumba said:

Just out of curiosity, what materials did you change?

I changed the ceiling material, dark shower wall tile, light shower wall tile, 'glass lighting', glass for wall sconces, mirror frame, taps, cabinet hardware, flooring.

[SusanC]

These are the 7 videos that were just released and the voice in the video is Kayla.  If you still don't get your question answered, a one on one training session would be worth the expense and time because the learning curve for PBR is steep - or at least it has been for me.  I've had 2 sessions with her over the last several months and she can help you with everything - including teaching you about adjusting materials, cameras, lights, light sets, other settings.  I book an hour with her, have a list of questions, and a working plan ready to go and that has been pretty efficient.   

[Redmumba]

6 minutes ago, robdyck said:

I changed the ceiling material, dark shower wall tile, light shower wall tile, 'glass lighting', glass for wall sconces, mirror frame, taps, cabinet hardware, flooring.

So here's what's confusing; I took the exact plan you sent me, opened up the camera you used to take the picture above with, and I still see some weird artifacts (plus, the shadows from the sun have also changed, even though it's hard coded in the camera config to be a specific angle). I also observed that it generated 9 sub-images (and 2000 samples each) which took about 5 minutes to render on export. I also don't see this behavior when just exporting from my active viewport which is only marginally smaller than your resolution of 3000x2005. Do you have any idea why this would yield different results?

[Redmumba]

8 minutes ago, SusanC said:

These are the 7 videos that were just released and the voice in the video is Kayla.  If you still don't get your question answered, a one on one training session would be worth the expense and time because the learning curve for PBR is steep - or at least it has been for me.  I've had 2 sessions with her over the last several months and she can help you with everything - including teaching you about adjusting materials, cameras, lights, light sets, other settings.  I book an hour with her, have a list of questions, and a working plan ready to go and that has been pretty efficient.   

Ah, I was looking under Rendering, did not see the separate Ray Trace section. I'm binging them right now!

 

Honestly, I'm not a professional like all of you folks--just a home owner who likes getting his hands dirty, so I'm not sure if I would even be able to fill an hour of questions. As such, I'm mostly looking for "good enough" so I think these learning videos (and both yours and Rob's help!) has been phenomenal! 

[SusanC]

Oh great!  I'm glad you found the Ray Tracing videos.  Hope those help and if you have more questions, just ask!    

[robdyck]

10 minutes ago, Redmumba said:

weird artifacts (plus, the shadows from the sun have also changed

artifacts? Can you be more specific? Maybe a screenshot with them highlighted.

Shadows...simple. I put the window blinds in after I had already created that image!

[robdyck]

12 minutes ago, Redmumba said:

Do you have any idea why this would yield different results?

When creating a view that is larger than the active view, I believe Chief breaks it down in to squared images and has to render each image at the set sample rate. The 3000 pixel wide image was rendered at 16 sub-images of 2000 sample each. Yes, that takes exponentially longer than using the active view size.

Consider that the active window has usually completed its set sample rate prior to a user exporting the image. The larger export requires the render to start from zero and repeat for each sub image.

[Redmumba]

4 minutes ago, robdyck said:

artifacts? Can you be more specific? Maybe a screenshot with them highlighted.

Shadows...simple. I put the window blinds in after I had already created that image!

Ah, that should've been obvious.

[Kbird1]

22 hours ago, Redmumba said:

Do you have any idea why this would yield different results?

 

The Image Export Function of Chief apparently has an undocumented De-Noiser built in , which is partially why Rob's images are much Cleaner than yours.

 

Apparently that statement is now withdrawn ...see below 

 

Chief has just posted a PDF this afternoon on Rendering from the Academy last week here too :

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/36465-chief-academy-2022-recap-and-resources/?do=findComment&comment=277149

 

Mick.

@Renerabbitt

 

[Renerabbitt]

17 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

The Image Export Function of Chief apparently has an undocumented De-Noiser built in , which is partially why Rob's images are much Cleaner than yours.

 

Chief has just posted a PDF this afternoon on Rendering from the Academy last week here too :

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/36465-chief-academy-2022-recap-and-resources/?do=findComment&comment=277149

 

Mick.

@Renerabbitt

 

The devs told me last week that there is no denoiser though I swear export images are always cleaner. is it my imagination?

[Renerabbitt]

Exported at 2k samples, duped the layer then threw it through topaz denoiser and brushed out the noise. made a bunch of camera raw adjustments, some exposure adjustments, painted light brushed on an exposure adjustment layer and then upscaled. It's a non-destructive stack so I can update on the fly. Had the exterior masked so I can change on the fly as well.
Couldve reduced the noise more with more samples

 

[para-CAD]

Rene.

 

 

Wow.

 

I hope you develop a 12 week course on this kind of work. 

I know you share an awful lot of free content, but a serious training course would be killer.

 

Thanks

 

v/r,

Mike

[Redmumba]

Wow, I feel pretty honored to have @Renerabbitt commenting on my render--and making it look fricken amazing. This looks awesome! I'm going to have to go through your description and reverse engineer all of it, haha... but I'm sure it'll only be a fraction as good looking even if I got it all right.

 

13 hours ago, para-CAD said:

I hope you develop a 12 week course on this kind of work. 

I know you share an awful lot of free content, but a serious training course would be killer.

 

 

For real!

[Kbird1]

1 hour ago, Redmumba said:

 I'm sure it'll only be a fraction as good looking even if I got it all right.

 

One thing you could do to make your Tile Work look more "Real" is learn the Use of (Wall) Material Regions , instead of using "Painted" on tile on the Drywall , Broken Walls or even Wall Coverings, as Material Regions can add thickness and thus more  "depth" and also be shaped in elevation like any CAD Polyline. They also work well for Bands and Stripes, set them 1/16th thicker than the field tile so they show through....

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-02929/using-material-regions.html

 

Mick.

 

 

[Redmumba]

2 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

One thing you could do to make your Tile Work look more "Real" is learn the Use of (Wall) Material Regions , instead of using "Painted" on tile on the Drywall , Broken Walls or even Wall coverings, as material can add thickness and thus more  "depth" and also be shaped in elevation like any CAD Polyline. They also work well for Bands and Strip, set then 1/16th thicker than the field tile so they show through)

This was actually something I was wondering about, since I did notice that sometimes it would add depth to the tile, but not always. I've been playing with the floor material regions, but didn't realize that this was possible for walls as well. Thanks for the tip!

[Kbird1]

23 minutes ago, Redmumba said:

This was actually something I was wondering about, since I did notice that sometimes it would add depth to the tile, but not always. I've been playing with the floor material regions, but didn't realize that this was possible for walls as well. Thanks for the tip!

 

Personally I don't let them Cut the Parent Wall and just use the Tile (thickness) itself so they sit on the Drywall and don't show unneeded layers in a Chief 3D view like Thinset or the Backerboard at the edges , which is common at Showers etc.

 

M

[Renerabbitt]

1 hour ago, Redmumba said:

 commenting on my render--and making it look fricken amazing

I was having a bit of fun and flattered truly, thank you.
Some thigns that always help, macke your own casing with a slight radius to soften the ultra sharp edges on the window. The base to shower curb transition could be considered. I would consider using a material region or backsplash like @Kbird1 said. These little details add up if you want a truly great render

[imodel]

The "grainy" in your original post is often referred to as "noise" and is common to all rendering programs.  It is possible that CA has plans to implement NVIDIA Real-Time Denoiser in a future release, but who knows.  It is part of the RTX feature set for developers.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/rtx/ray-tracing

 

Looks like you have lots of suggestions above to try in the meantime.