I've been working on the railroad

[R Reynolds]

Try it again Robert, I replaced the video with one that uses the H264 format.

[itsjustme]

Looks great, Rodger!  The only issue I saw was probably the video compression causing artifacts in the reflections on the trailers.

[R Reynolds]

They're not compression artifacts. They're just as obvious in the rendered TGAs and the uncompressed AVI. I suspect it's an anti-aliasing issue so going to 4x4 or 5x5 oversampling would be the first test I'd run.

[robcat2075]

9 hours ago, R Reynolds said:

 I suspect it's an anti-aliasing issue...

You mean the flickering when the surfaces are seen very close to on edge?

 

[R Reynolds]

I see two issues.

First look at the following four frames and note the vertical sheet metal seam that runs between the last two letters of Canadian. To me it flashes like a fine, straight geometric detail that hasn't been sampled enough.

piggyback_walkaround_a077.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a078.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a079.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a080.tga

What I find more puzzling can be seen in four later frames.

piggyback_walkaround_a803.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a804.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a805.tga

piggyback_walkaround_a806.tga

I think the noise in the reflection of the factory's vertical siding in the wavy sheet metal would be improved by higher oversampling. But the sheet metal seam (actually created by the normal decal below) that comes in from the right seems way too reflective with no underlying green colour. This is why it's so obvious in the previous four frames.

Getting the camera this close was an experiment on my part. After all you can see the pixels in the decal of the word SERVICE as it passes. I figured a decal for the seams would be an adequate way to reduce patch count but I may have to bite that bullet with these chromed seams. But for generating Instagram content for the phones of friends and family, it'll do.

 

[robcat2075]

Try rendering 803-806 with (at least) 9 passes and 100% motion blur and see what happens.

How about a bump map for the seam instead of a normal map?

[R Reynolds]

Excellent suggestion! Attached are three sets of four images with descriptive names for clarity.

9x9_noblur are the originals; 9x9 oversampling with no motion blur

9x9_blur are the same oversampling but with 100% motion blur

16x16_blur are sampled at 16x16 with 100% motion blur

It certainly helps the chaos in the reflections but ultimately these grazing angled reflections of closely spaced vertical lines in a very wavy surface will be pretty noisy. That chaos is a good simulation of reality. If I really want less noise, I need to reduce the bumps in the sheet metal material.

 As for replacing the normal map with a bump map, also a great suggestion since it's trivial to generate and replace with no re-modeling required. I'll just have to get over my obsession with the improved (IMO) look of a normal map.

Thanks, Robert.

piggyback_walkaround_9x9_noblur_00.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_noblur_01.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_noblur_02.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_noblur_03.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_blur_00.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_blur_01.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_blur_02.tga piggyback_walkaround_9x9_blur_03.tga piggyback_walkaround_16x16_blur_00.tga piggyback_walkaround_16x16_blur_01.tga piggyback_walkaround_16x16_blur_02.tga piggyback_walkaround_16x16_blur_03.tga

[robcat2075]

It is the slightest of improvements.

another idea... render the frames at 3x the res... 3840x2160... and then resize them down to 1280x720 in Photoshop.

You probably only need to do one pass since this will be like 3x3 antialiasing.

 

Quote

As for replacing the normal map with a bump map, also a great suggestion since it's trivial to generate and replace with no re-modeling required.

and when you have the bump map made you can also test it as a displacement map.

 

[R Reynolds]

Here's a re-rendering with better behaved sheet metal seams. Not only is the seam now a bump map but it's been reduced from 100% "intensity" to 23%. Being produced at the Instagram worthy ratio of 720 X 480 also makes the noisiness in the reflections more tolerable.