Somehow things are getting a bit blurry?

[Eric2575]

I just rendered this cupboard twice, once with 0 multipass and once with 9x multi. Both renders came out somewhat blurry. Of course I checked the usual such as depth of field (off), reflections soft (off), fog (off), etc. In the options, I checked "use settings from this dialog" and only have shadows and reflections on in the rendering options. I'm using nothing other than Yves 20 light skylight. Got me stumped.

[zandoriastudios]

uncheck "soften" in the multipass settings.

[DanCBradbury]

Hey, welcom back Eric. You were gone for a month, how been man?

 

Anyways, from what i can tell with that render you posted, there isnt really any bluring at all. The soften in multipass is used to make the image less pixilated, and I dont think it would cause widespread blurring like you said it's doing.

 

Great model you got there.

[martin]

Anyways, from what i can tell with that render you posted, there isnt really any bluring at all. The soften in multipass is used to make the image less pixilated, and I dont think it would cause widespread blurring like you said it's doing.

One man's antialiasing in another man's blurring. Indeed, when "soften" is turned on, that is a bluring stage in the multipass renderer.

[Eric2575]

I guess I should have said one render with no multipass instead of 0 multipass. In other words, one render that also came out soft or blurry had no multipass at all. If there was no multipass, there shouldn't have been the softening effect, right? The last render I did only had reflections and shadows on, but still came out soft and fuzzy.

 

The render below is in a default chor, no skylights, multipass set at 16x with soft set to on and depth of field set to off. This render is better than the first one, but still has issues. I'm going to repeat it with soft set to off, but doubt that will fix it. I don't believe the soft setting in multipass is the culprit here since one of the first renders had no multipass at all. In the first renders, I'm leaning more toward something I'm not doing right with the skylights. Gotta experiment some more.

 

Heya Dan:

 

Been good man, just havin to take care of some stuff I've been neglectin. Good to be back. Last I heard, you were going to do an interior for your car? Was that tongue in cheek or have you done that?

 

The last render has no multipass but is virtually the same as the previous render. Both have an issue with the soft render of the wave detail in the top of the cabinet. Again, depth of field is set to off.

 

Compare this to the first render with the skylights and really see what I mean. The settings, other than the fact that one has skylights and the other is a default chor, are identical. What could cause the render with the skylights to come out so soft looking?

 

Yves?

 

P.S. Martin, just read your post while editing mine. I don't know what ABuffer is, I'm just referring to multipasses. The renders are either with 16x multipass or no multipass (multipass set to "off".)

[martin]

You need to get your nomenclature right: Do you mean "ABuffer" rendering, or "Multipass" with 1 pass. 1 pass Multipass STILL blurs if you have "soften" on.

[Eric2575]

Sorry, this should be posted after Martin's reply:

 

I don't know what ABuffer is, I'm just referring to multipasses. The renders are either with 16x multipass or no multipass (multipass set to "off".) I can see the difference in the two renders above what the soft setting does in multipass, but even with multipass "off", there is still the soft look in the wave detail in the top of the cabinet. And, the render looks really soft with skylights and no multipass. I'm probably just being anal here, but I haven't noticed this in previous renders, at least not like this.

[martin]

I'm probably just being anal here, but I haven't noticed this in previous renders, at least not like this.

I think you got your "eye" in overdrive, but don't sweat it. I suggest you do a lot of experiments with Post Effects, and differing render resolutions, and different light configurations. Soon, you'll be the "expert."

[cfree68f]

looks to me like it might actually be your shadows.. its obvious you are using zbuffer shadows and they are soft.. that might make the edges in shadow look soft if the color is close enough to the shadow color.

 

the bottom isnt in shadow so it might be sharper?

 

I'm not really seeing what you are, but I'm guessing that might be it. You might try turning on ratraced shadows with 4 rays per light or something like that and see if that helps.

 

C

[Eric2575]

My girlfriend always says I have bionic eyes and ears, but now, that you guys aren't seeing what I am seeing, I think I might be losing it

 

Colin, maybe you're on to something with the shadow thing. I haven't really done anything with renders other than the default and or Yves skylight setup, so I don't know what zbuffers or raytraced shadows are. Could you give me the short and sweet of those and where are the settings for them? Sorry to be such a noob.

 

Thanks

[DanCBradbury]

Heya Dan:

 

Been good man, just havin to take care of some stuff I've been neglectin. Good to be back. Last I heard, you were going to do an interior for your car? Was that tongue in cheek or have you done that?

College got in the way of that

 

Remember, that when multipassing is turned off, the default antialiasing will take over. This could be giving you your crazy bluring... but i really dont know what i'm looking at. One thing that is rather odd, though. The shadow made by the shelf in that last pic doesn't seem right at all.

 

 

I don't know what zbuffers or raytraced shadows are.

wow jk

 

Raytraced Shadows are the most acurate shadow type, and are best used with either very low raycasts and high multipasses, or very high ray casts and very few multipasses. If you use only 1 ray cast (the default in A:M) you will get an undesired banding effect if you have multipasses set higher than 1. To prevent this banding make sure you always have at least 2 ray casts; this will result in a noisey shadow, which after several passes or a very high amount of ray casts will disappear seamlessly, resulting in an acurate light penumbra. Raytrace shadows in their grittiest faise look like this.

 

Z-buffered shadows on the other hand, are a very complicated and can be a verry inacurate form of shadow; however, they render incredibly quick, and very efficiantly. My understanding is that Z-Buffered shadows allocate a certain number of pixels to each object or patch making the shadows somewhat pixelated or banded, but I know very little about z-buffed shadows so i will let someone else explain them. I dont want to be spreading misinformation

[Eric2575]

Thanks for the quick and dirty on raytraced shadows, Dan.

 

Now that you point out the shadow irregularity, I'll have to see what that's all about. If it's not one thing, it's another.

[martin]

Apparently, Dan is not aware of ZBuffer shadow size. If your ZBuffer shadows look like those in Dan's picture, then they are too small. You can increase ZBuffer shadow size in the drop down in the shadow section of the light properties.

[ypoissant]

I've read the whole thread and here is my hypothesis:

 

The use of the word "blurry" in your description was unfortunate. In rendering terms, it means very specific techniques. No matter how hard I would examine your renders (all of them) I could just not see any bluring (in its technical sense) in them. So I don't think your problem is one of technically bluring.

 

I came to the conclusion that what you are refering to as bluring is actually just the lack in contrasts on the shading for the groves in the top portion of your furniture compared to the bottom portions.

 

If that is your issue, then this is just normal. There are no problems there. You get better shading contrasts in the bottom portion of the furniture because your surface geometry details (the groves) are not all oriented along the y axis like it is in the top portion.

 

Because you have light ( skylight) coming mostly from top and symetric around the y axis, you will get stronger shadows on groves oriented along the x or z axis but weak shadows on groves oriented along the y axis.

 

If you want stronger shadows on your y axis oriented groves, you will have te devise tricks so that you get assymetric light coming from your skylight. You could place a patch, outside from the field of view, somewhere beside your furniture, to mask some part of the light that comes from the skylight. Or add another light in the scene to produce an assymetric lighting.

 

From the casted shadows on the ground, I see that you are using z-buffer shadows. z-buffer shadows can miss small details (like the groves) in your models and produce wrong self-shadowing. You might want to increase the z-buffer shadow map resolution but if that still does not solve the shadowing issue, you will have to revert to ray-traced shadows. Be prepared for longer render times though.

 

As a note, multipass rendering with fewer than 5 passes does not use softening, The multipass "Soften" option is only available if the number of passes is at least 5. So a multipass with 1 pass render cannot be blured unless you explicitly added a blur post effect.

[JohnArtbox]

The problem with the incorrect back shadow usually occurs when an object is not double sided/closed. If your cupboard already has a back, I can't help