Better DOF and adaptive sampling...

[cecofuli]

Hello,
I know, it's on the "TO DO" list, but I want to show you my test:

3500 px + 4 PC in DR (yes, 4 PC) + 12 hours + 8 PTS = everything was very clean (textures, area shadows, GI) but look at the noise on the DOF =(

[Polymax]

try set MSI to 400

[cecofuli]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try. But, with one PC it was about 44 hours of rendering. So, I think it's a big Corona problem.

[maru]

try set MSI to 400

And how could this help?

[cecofuli]

The DOF isn't so strong in this scene. The main problem is the DOF  where we have reflective objects and strong highlights.
In this case, the lamp is in clear glass.

[maru]

Just for test, I would try selecting this region and rendering this with buckets - give it a small amount of PTS - like 2 and a crazy amount of initial samples like 500 or more.

[Polymax]

try set MSI to 400

And how could this help?

This less clamp the samples.

[maru]

try set MSI to 400

And how could this help?

This less clamp the samples.

And produces more noise?

[cecofuli]

Ok, my test:

(*) As you can see, first test was with CROP option. Both, bucket and progressive, gave me the same result.
(*) Well, with Progressive + PTS = 2 + 45 min, I obtain a clean DOF in 45 min (652 passes). Maybe, after 300-400 was enough.
(*) I render at full resolution + same settings (PTS = 2). In 10 hours  I had 122 passes! For 600, I need 50 hours!
The problem is: with 122 passes everything was clean except the DOF (very noisy)

CONCLUSION: in all my projects, I would like to use real 3D DOF. But, always, I've problem with noise  =(

[maru]

I may be wrong but I think your major mistake here is setting LSM to 16. Direct lighting is not the part of your image that will refine slowest. So with your settings lots of samples will be devoted to direct lighting at the cost of rendering time. Leave LSM at default 2 or even lower it to 1. I hope this will give you some speed improvement.

For me adaptivity is only usable in bucket mode, I'd suggest turning it off when progressive rendering.

So: set LSM to 1, switch to bucket mode, set PTS to 2 or 4, and buckets to something like 500-10-0,02 (but I think it should render in 2-3 passes). If it's still noisy you could try setting PTS or initial samples in buckets to some higher values but I still don't promise any success. ;)

You can also try experimenting with different random samplers but I'm not sure how they work.

[Ludvik Koutny]

I would try to raise PT samples, maybe 16-32...  and Light samples multiplier probably does not need to be that high... for LSM, i would try 2-4...

[cecofuli]

Unfortunately, I don't have too much time to do a new test, but I think with low LSM  nothing change. I did some very fast render, with small crop. With the same time (2 minutes) the noise in the hard region still here...

[rafpug]

Hello cecofuli

...Adaptive 3  - 15 - 0,02   

This value 15 corresponds to the method Bucket ?

[maru]

No... He wrote PROGRESSIVE right over it. You can't set bucket passes to more than 10...

[rafpug]

Hi maru

yes,
and the value 15 corresponds to what?

I read Adaptivity, perhaps it is a new parameter of the build?