Corona 1.3 with 1.4 render speed comparison

[Bormax]

Hello,
Don't remember from wich daily I start to fill that Corona 1.4 builds clean picture slower, but I was too attracted with denoising, so I didn't concentrate on this. But now I decided to make some tests and compare render speed of Corona 1.3 and 1.4. Results made me a bit sad... Here are comparison pictures rendered with no denoising:

pictures 1, 2 - project made with Corona 1.3 and rendered 13 min with 1.3 and 1.4 (sorry for blured area - names....)
picture 3 - crops zoomed 200%
plus statistics and render setup  UIs
picture 4 - crop of the project I just start to work on, made with 1.4 and rendered with  both 1.4 and 1.3, zoomed 200%

As you can see Corona 1.4 gives much noisier result with the same render time. Also parsing time is longer. Beside that CoronaMultiMap gives different color combination in 1.3 and 1.4 version (look cars colors).
I'd like to ask - is it the price for posibility to denoise picture or something wrong with my render settings or what ever from my side? Did somebody make the same kind of tests?

Win 7, dual Xeon E5-2660, 32Gb of RAM, Max 2014

[Ondra]

Can you show us the sampling focus render element?

[Bormax]

Here it is.

[Juraj]

Oversampling trees....reminds me how Grant Warvick requested sample multiplier so he could lower it per object via Vray attributes so that they get less sampling since noise isn't visible.

Not sure if there can be intelligent solution that would guess correctly when noise isn't obvious for human eye. Good cause to keep adaptivity optional or adjust stregth perhaps.

[pokoy]

The noisy splotches on the wall of the building look very similar to the noise I have in one image that I can't recall seeing in earlier versions - does the wall material use low level reflection with low glossiness?
Makes me wonder if there was thorough internal testing done of older versions vs 1.4 - I think this would have certainly became visible in some cases.

[Bormax]

The noisy splotches on the wall of the building look very similar to the noise I have in one image that I can't recall seeing in earlier versions - does the wall material use low level reflection with low glossiness?
Makes me wonder if there was thorough internal testing done of older versions vs 1.4 - I think this would have certainly became visible in some cases.

Here is outside wall material structure. Inner brownish walls have reflectivity set to 0 :)

[pokoy]

Thanks - similar to my setup: BlendMtl using two slightly reflective materials with low glossiness. Maybe blending materials is problematic in 1.4.

Ondra, I guess you have several machines with different versions of Corona for internal tests anyway. Could you test this kind of materials in 1.3 and 1.4? Or anyone else? I am super sorry but I really have no time to do any testing right now...

[Bormax]

So, I still don't understand - are these results of my tests normal for Corona 1.4, or there really something wrong? If there something wrong, I'd like to know can I do something to make Corona work as it should? Can somebady else make this kind of tests and share results, please?

[Caue Rodrigues]

How about render settings on both? Did you change something or used default settings?

[Bormax]

How about render settings on both? Did you change something or used default settings?

Settings are default. If you want you can check them, I atached UI screens in ferst post here

[Juraj]

Hm, no one else has comparison ?

[rafpug]

Hello Bormax
you can connect the scene files for verification ?

[Bormax]

Hello Bormax
you can connect the scene files for verification ?

Hello Rafpug,

If this situation would happen with one or two scenes, I would decide that problem somewhere inside those scenes, but I have the same picture with all scenes - new or old.
Here are couple of new tests, all pictures rendered after reset of render settings, 5 minutes of render. White color of trees - RGB 150, empty cube - RGB 128 with no reflection.
More complex scene, more complex materials - more visible difference of noisiness

[romullus]

I don't think that those results are unexpected. Afterall, adaptivness isn't meant to speed up rendering, it just helps to distribute noise more evenly over entire image. So, if you have situation where there's good mix of areas which tends to hide noise pretty well, with areas where's noise is very evident even in low quantities, then adaptivity might be just counterproductive. So if you have rendering of house with big flat walls in the forest or in meadows, or nicely lit interior scene with big windows and even bigger hairy carpets, in that situation adaptivity may do more harm than good. I guess it isn't so universal thing, as we hoped it to be. Maybe decision to hide its controls, wasn't the best one?

What puzzles me more, is how adaptivity reacts to brigtness in diffuse texture. It assigns much more samples to darker textures than to brighter ones. You can clearly see that in first post in the striped wall part.

[rafpug]

Hello Bormax
Denoise works well , you have to understand the disturbing element in the scene.