[numerobis]

4000 watt candle flame.

and youre scene scale is correct?!?

[jfrancis]

BTW, a 4000 watt candle is not too realistic.

Yes, I realize that. And I understand why a 40 watt candle doesn't show up in the presence of that spotlight.

What I don't understand is why a 40 watt candle shows up at all, even alone in the scene, given the default 1/750 shutter speed and 100 ISO I was using. Is there some auto-exposure thing I'm not aware of?

I want to see what happens if I lower the spotlight's intensity into the same universe as the candle's and adjust the camera settings accordingly.

[jfrancis]

4000 watt candle flame.

and youre scene scale is correct?!?

4000 watt candle flame.

:/

that little face at the bottom is a 'wtf is a 4000 watt candle necessary for?' face.

Maya grid is in cm. Scene scale ie 1.0

As far as I know that's the right thing to do.

[jfrancis]

okay, well, I guess I'm licked on this.

Maybe I'll do it in passes and comp it.

[jfrancis]

Okay, back in balance with a 40 watt candle instead of a 4000 watt one.

(reflectivity 0 and 90 and roughness still = 0)

I guess the raw ingredients are in place, although I may ultimately end up using virtual light on a virtual floor from a real candle shot and retouched in.

[itsallgoode9]

is it literally impossible to create a noise free render using SSS? here is an image, using IBL, which rendered for 43 hours on a intel 980x (that's Intel's fastest chip currently... a 6 physical core, 12 with hyper threading chip, running at 3.8 ghz). As you can see there's quite a bit is noise left in this image. I know noise reduction software can be used, but there is just so much crispness lost on an image when doing that.

I'm just wondering what is up with SSS and if it is considered a broken feature as of Maxwell V2 and will be improved in V3? May I'm expecting too much, but these times for such a simple render seems absolutely ludicrous to me.

[-Adrian]

That type if noise is impossible to kill. I really doubt though, that any crispness would be lost with noise reduction software. You just have to use the proper parameters.

Looks great btw!

[itsallgoode9]

That type if noise is impossible to kill. I really doubt though, that any crispness would be lost with noise reduction software. You just have to use the proper parameters.

Looks great btw!

thanks for the compliment, but I am so frustrated about SSS right now. I think you are right that in this image the noise reduction will work fine, but if you are doing a render that has more details in it than this, I feel like you would definitely see some softness happen after noise reduction...maybe not though.

I really want to be using SSS for some of my projects where I'm working with these semi translucent plastics, but i just don't think it's going to be able to happen.

[jfrancis]

That type if noise is impossible to kill. I really doubt though, that any crispness would be lost with noise reduction software. You just have to use the proper parameters.

Looks great btw!

thanks for the compliment, but I am so frustrated about SSS right now. I think you are right that in this image the noise reduction will work fine, but if you are doing a render that has more details in it than this, I feel like you would definitely see some softness happen after noise reduction...maybe not though.

I really want to be using SSS for some of my projects where I'm working with these semi translucent plastics, but i just don't think it's going to be able to happen.

Maybe you can take the time you are spending rendering SSS as noise-free as possible and spend it rendering noisier frames at 2 x to 4 x the resolution you need. When you shrink down to required rez the sense of noise may be less. I'm not sure if that is feasible or not but it might be something to test.

[Bubbaloo]

Also something you can do is render out a material ID pass and use that as a mask in Photoshop to define only the part of the render you want to apply noise reduction to.

[itsallgoode9]

i think i'm going to be testing the method of rendering larger, then shrinking down. Based on some other tests I have done, I estimate I'd still need to let this render around 20hrs to get it clean enough for noise reduction to be feasible. So maybe shrinking down, plus noise reduction will help.

Since something like this has fairly subtle SSS, is it possible to get it to look good without using SSS? just working with roughness and and attenuation parameters? I tried doing that before but got really nowhere.

[Bubbaloo]

The high resolution render technique is a good option. I always render final renderings to the highest resolution my hardware will allow.

Another option is to do a render region of only the problem area, then comp it into the final render using an object_ID mask. It will render much faster than re-rendering the whole product. I've also done this before with very nice results.

[rusteberg]

you see, itsy.... everyone's here to help you. no need to drop the F bomb. (although it is quite satisfying to do so. i'm a fan of the word myself)

if your client gives you hell about the noise, then just tell them to go to hell.... yeah? see, much better already. breathe in, breathe out.... breathe in, breathe out..... good. now you're ready to stop complaining and ready to start rendering more beautiful product shots, regardless of noise filtering methods. don't hate the player itsy, hate the game. biatch

[Mihai]

There's noise in the orange plastic cap but not in the rest. If you could post your materials, perhaps the colors are too bright or a combination of transmittance/scattering strength which makes it more noisy than the blue plastic.

[itsallgoode9]

Thanks for everybodys advice. I've got my Maxwell anger under control now and now ready to move forward with making some SSS renderings to slay the dragon, which is Maxwell SSS. I'll keep any other updates in the "beauty product rendering" thread in "wip", lest I have general questions about SSS. Thanks for calming me down. (btw, we need a Maxwell Anger Managment group haha )