[RobMitchell]

This is our first architectural render and it's still a work in progress. We were going for a minimal yet realistic look of a Georgian-era house with modern appliances and I think it's coming along really well.

My only issue, as with most people, is the noise. I know that using white materials and glass increases noise and rendering time, but with 80+ hours of rendering and some post work applied in Photoshop, I'd have hoped for a clearer image by now. Will leaving it to render longer help (as the last few hours haven't made much difference at all) or should I be thinking about a different technique to remove the noise?

Any insight would be great (I'm also reading around the forum and gathering up all the info I can on this subject), as would any comments on how to improve the render in general aside from the noise.

Thanks!

Below is a scaled down shot of the room:


And here is a full-res close-up of the foot rest:


As you can see, the noise is still quite strong.

Note: Chair and footrest models provided by ModelUP.

[kami]

hi.

there are a lot of topics in this forum concerning the noise problems containing valuable tips. since i cannot remember anything particular, here my few thoughts:
does the windows have glass? try using ags instead or leave the window glass empty, there won't be much difference.
the whitest white shouldn't have rgb values over 220. if the image gets to greyish with it, try upping the exposure value
how are you lighting the scene? is it all pure natural light by a sky through this one window? if the room has other windows: build them as well.
an alternative would be to substitute the sky lighting with white emitters at every window. in my experience this renders faster, but may look a bit different.
what computer do you use for the rendering?

these are my few tips against the noise. the image looks really nice so far. great materials and modelling. what's disturbing me is floor tiling which doesn't meet well with the wall

greets, kami

[Bubbaloo]

Most of the noise is concentrated on the white areas leading me to believe it is your white paint material that is the cause. Mind posting the settings for that material?

_Edit: Image looks great as is!!

[Fernando Tella]

It's looking great!

Watch out your wood floor material: bump and roughness map don't match the position of reflectance map.

[medmonds]

Too much rounding on the legs of the ottoman and chair. The Barcelona design has fairly crisp corners on the chrome.

[RobMitchell]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! To answer some questions...

-----------------------------------------
@ kami: The windows do have glass. I've just set one up without, as, like you said, not having glass in this particular scene's windows shouldn't make a big difference, visually.

I've heard the best values for white are RGB 242, which is currently what it is set to. I will try it next with 220 as that could really speed things up.

The scene is lit fully by natural light. This was the only light that gave us the result we were looking for. The room contains 4 windows, 3 of which are off camera. If you look closely in the chrome you can see their reflections. :p

This computer's details are as follows:

Dell Precision T3400
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU
Processor: Q6700 @ 2.66GHz
RAM: 8GB
-----------------------------------------
@ Bubbaloo: I'm actually using the White Interior Wall material for this. The latest version has one of the textures turned off though, and the whiteness set down from RGB 242 to 220 (as Kami suggested).
-----------------------------------------
@ Fernando Tella: I noticed this too as I was preparing the image. I looked back at the material and everything was sized and positioned the same... then I noticed the bump map was linking itself to a different wood texture of the same name. They're re-named and re-organised now so that should be fine.
-----------------------------------------
@ medmonds: Like I said at the bottom of the post, the chair and footrest were provided by ModelUP, but thanks for the advice. I'll look up on it!
-----------------------------------------

Thanks again for the comments and tips. Much appreciated.

[JorisMX]

I would simply add some contrast to the image behind the window, its pretty washed out.

I like the chair!

[kami]

keep us up with updates! is it running faster now? on your machine you should get a decent result after 24h ...
if not, you should consider using white emitters at every window except the sky. Besides: do you have a ground plane outside the window? the sky seems to be lighting your scene from below which gives an unnatural light on the ceiling.

otherwise it's already a really nice image!

[JTB]

keep us up with updates! is it running faster now? on your machine you should get a decent result after 24h ...!

This doesn't sound very optimistic

[RobMitchell]

Here's a quick update following your advice. This is just grabbed from the raw renders with no post-work, which is why they both look a bit rough.

The image on the left is the latest render and on the right is the old one.



So overall, the render is a lot clearer on a small scale like that. Still, when I view it at 100% it's quite noisy, as this section shows:



I suppose that's what you get for using white materials. :p Thanks again for the advice so far, guys. I just hope it can perhaps be cleared a bit more over time.

[Bubbaloo]

What resolution are you rendering at?

[RobMitchell]

What resolution are you rendering at?

Full resolution is 6000 x 3000 px, in order to be able to print at 300dpi.

[Bubbaloo]

That's a good resolution. I usually try to render as high res as possible on my computer for final images. Noise doesn't seem to be as much of a factor at large res.

[tokiop]

very nice progress !

Are the image at the same sampling level? You only used a lower white and put one texture away? The result is very noticeable ! Like Bubbaloo said, I don't think the noise will be noticeable once printed, usualy you have to add some in photoshop to break the "too clean" look of other rendering engines

[RobMitchell]

@ Bubbaloo: Yep. We always try render with print quality in mind, so we can keep them as hi-res as possible.

@ tokiop: Thanks! Yep, the images have reached the same SL. Toning down the white and removing a texture and glass really made a big difference. We also like to keep some noise on the images, as like you said, it adds realism, but we were hoping for a slightly cleaner final image. But there are various ways around lowering the noise, so it's just a case of finding the right technique now.