how do you feel about grain?
Upirium
Posts: 711
in The Commons
with my mid-range cpu and radeon gpu i am always forced to deal with grain because i can't leave my stuff rendering for an entire day
i notice even product pictures have grain. i am wondering how others feel about it. if you see grain in your picture, or someone else's perhaps, is it a make or break deal? or do you try to get rid of it?
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as a gamer as well i am currently trying to go for the nvidia rtx 3060. i do not want to buy a graphics card that is lesser than my current radeon just to do renders becuase i bought this pc for moderate gaming. unfortunately they just don't exist rn so i'm stuck with the grain u.u
It's annoying. For some unknown reason, all of my renders have had grain/and/fireflies a since I've upgraded (not by choice) to an SSD. Whether it's just a coincidence, I have no idea.
mCasual has a neat tool to deal with it (if anyone is interested): https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/334881/a-i-based-open-source-de-noiser-for-daz-studio-pc-and-macs/p1
ah yeah i have that denoiser. but unfortunatley sometimes in high grain situations with human characters it makes them look plastic and i end up just putting the denoiser output at half opacity over the original image. i don't mind as much for things that are farther away.
I think rye is my favorite personally, but you generally still need to mix some wheat as well or your bread will be too dense. Buckwheat is definitely my least favorite grain
okay actual response, the problem with render grain is it tends to be in certain areas and not even, which makes it nothing like film grain which is pretty even. I like to use the denoiser in blender's compositor personallyfor anything that really doesn't want to clear up I can combine both the noisy and denoised versions manually. so if the background of a render isn't clearing up I can use the denoised version there, but bring back the undenoised skin
I render oversized and downsample. I find having more pixels to work with seems to help the renderer resolve complexities in the picture and the downsampling usually gets rid of the grain.
does that increase render time?
On first glance: yes. But the idea is that you don't have to render until all the grain is gone, but stop early. Downsize algorithms effectively remove the grain as it tries to find an "avarage" color.
So instead of rendering a (for example) 1024x1024 image to 100%, you'd render a 2048x2048 image to somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, and then resize the result to 1024x1024.
The second image usually reaches 40% faster than the first image reaches 100%. The downsized render still won't be as good as the 100% render, but still, less smoothed (plastic) and more detailed than a denoised render. This trick is more suitable for still images though. Animations are still best to render at their intended size, to reduce flickering. You can often even get away with some minor noise on animation frames, or just remove that manually in photoshop.
I'm using an old version of PhotoImpact which comes with a Retouch-Blur tool that has settings 1-5. In areas that have noise I just do a gentle one (maybe 2) click blur with the tool set to the appropriate size.... bingo. I don't see any point in denoising an entire image because the results of DS denoiser aren't good, and most noise is confned to low lit areas of renders.
Quinoa is like one of those super grains, but we've been having more barley.
The point of downsizing an oversampled render is to get the rendering engine to operate in its most efficient period, between -1 and +1 standard deviation. Think of light going through the camera's aperture like a statistical sample. It's taking in a sample of photons that pass through the aperture, and the point of oversample/downsize is to get the renderer working in that efficient part.
Also, maybe try brightly lit scenes and then work from there. It's the heavy shadow stuff that will make more grain.w
...bugger, Photoimpact x3 is a bit expensive for the budget just for a denoiser function.
Yes it's usually only the darker portions of a scene that are problematic, so running a denoiser on everything does tend to also affect portions that render clean like skin and hair and like iDuru mentions, can make characters look "plasticy".
For a scene I'm currently working on just straight rendering is taking 25,000 iterations at 933 x1,200 to get a fairly clean image which on an older Titan-X takes about 2hrs 20 min.
The agency I work with rejects images with grain/noise. I've learned that there are some very bad 3D artists out there, some very good ones. The good ones get my money.
Megh... grain happens. Besides, I'm not interested in spending thousands of dollars or dozens of hours on renders nobody else gives a crap about.
And here I am expecting a discussion of the different grain options for baking, brewing and suchlike...
So disappointed...
And not even MCGyver did manage to add something interesting to the thread...
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7015251/#Comment_7015251
well you can sand and paint if you don't like the grain,
if you like the look without the roughness, French Polish works well but thats a lot of sanding between applying linseed oil and shellac
A response from an amateur/hobbyist....? Selling and earning an income from art is a whole other world you have apparently not yet entered.
McGyver is damned talented, I have a few of his models
I know a few artists that sell their work too and none of them worry too much about the underlying render they postwork to create art with, same as master painters don't worry too about the sketch, blocked out forms they paint over as long as the composition looks right.
I guess some people sell renders as is though ...
It can add great affects. It can be poorly done, or just not work.
The only answer that matters: are you happy with the render?
Alternatively, try Blender, it has a great denoiser regardless of your card. I use both Blender and Studio for rendering.
Well, if one wants to denoise the darker bits, just run the whole thing through a denoiser (I like the post-render FOSS denoiser, not the integrated one, myself)... then you just layer the original plus the denoised versions.
Put the original over the denoised, then erase the darker bits with grain on the original so that the denoised part comes through. Then you've got a blended image with the good parts of both.
You could also do a composited bit with opacity rather than erasure, blending the render output with the denoiser output with the opacity slider... it'll kill some noise and some of the detail, but hopefully your eye will see where the optimal blend of detail/de-grained is best.
You don't have to 100% with the denoised output or the raw render output, although the "post-work is anathema" crowd might disagree & claim this is "unrealistic" or whatever.
EDIT:
I've also rendered above scale to oversample, then downsize, then run the downsized through the denoiser... then processed via layering with opacity to get (with my eye) the optimal outcome between raw render detail and downsized/denoised. Combine a few techniques to get the thing that pleases your eye the most, and don't be consumed by raw render output, IMO.
I'm torn on grain because when I direct films, I love shooting on film because I love film grain, but when I do an animated film the grain just drives me nuts and I can't have any of it.
A little bit of grain can be artistic but lots of grain usally isn't.
If you want to degrain after you render or whenever, I highly recommend this - https://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/dnden/ - I have used it many times.
...thanks for the link, I'll give that a try.
Sounds like something AI can help with
Maybe in a future Daz AI tools can be sold?
This is also what I use.
The problem with render grain is, that it's a totally different thing from film grain.
Filmgrain is dispersed relatively evenly across an image (or randomly, depends how you look at it, but there's such quantity that it could be called evenly, despite it technically being random). The causes of filmgrain are mainly impurities in the materials used.
Rendergrain is dispersed unevenly, and concentrates in areas featuring shadows, transparent surfaces and reflective surfaces. Rendergrain actually isn't entirely random, it is the result of calculations and averaging the results of calculations. Few calculations with very varied results yield a lot of grain. Increasing the amount of calculations converges the results, effectively making the grain disappear.
Where filmgrain (and even some good filmgrain filters in post) can result in a "complete" result, rendergrain does not, and will always look unfinished.
For someone who's going to do some photoshopping in post-work, rendergrain may not be an issue, there are many tricks to get rid of it, which may be much faster than letting the render cook for another 30 minutes.
For someone who mainly uses renders for reference or as a guide for making art, rendergrain isn't an issue at all: the outlines and some general idea of how (high)lights and shadows come out are all that really matters.
Thank you... I second guessed myself and was actually going to say something wheat or rice related, but I was like...
"No, be serious for a change you insufferable bastard, you've been noticing the gain issues in the promos, just add a comment about that and don't go into the whole history of grain and cereal products and mankind's strange obsession with these seeds, which pretty much only hung around for so long because they are easy to store and measure for trade...
Basically if you think about the nutrition to effort ratio for primitive peoples, the only thing grains had going for them was their ability to be stored for winter or lean times... that I guess and the carbohydrates, but nowadays nobody really wants carbs because that'll make your butt fat and unless you are into that whole big booty thing, which is fine I suppose, but you really gotta watch your carbs and nobody wants a big butt unless they are rich, in which case they'll get butt implants because you know how rich people always look down on average folks until they think that a habit or thing they do is cool, then they coopt the thing and make it unaffordable for the average person or poor folks...
If you think about it, they did that with salmon and oysters... those used to be poor people foods, salmon was a pretty cheap fish because it was abundant and eventually it caught on as a good smokable fish and was adopted by Jewish immigrants in America who turned it into a scrumptious food and once rich people saw that it became a delicacy...
Oysters were pretty cheap at one point because they have such a limited freshness span and they couldn't be transported too far before they went dangerously bad, but once people figured how to use insulated ice boxes to transport things like that long distances, suddenly the price of oysters shot up...
I don't know why I'm telling this to myself since this is supposed to be an internal soliloquy, but there was actually such demand for oysters among the rich that by the 1880s an economic "Oyster Bubble" was building...
Overnight ordinary bay men had become millionaires harvesting and selling oysters because they were actually able to be shipped around the country and that demand by the rich led to innovations in canning that allowed canned oysters to be cheaply available for the masses... and once that happened the bottom dropped out of the oyster market and people lost fortunes... and for ages nobody really wanted them, but the damage was done and oysters were no longer as plentiful as they used to be which once again drove up the price, but not necessarily the popularity of oysters...
Which I suppose that will probably happen with the fat butt market...
Right now you have millionaires trying to pad their flat butts with plastic surgery, but once you can do plastic butt surgery at home, maybe with a 3D CNC home surgery machine or something, fat butts will fall out of popularity and become affordable to poor people again.
Which is good because poor people shouldn't be prevented from having fat butts just because they can't afford to have butt implants...
Fat butts should be cheap and easy to get...
Wait what was I talking about and how did I get out in the woods here?
I think I was reading a thread at DAZ and I was thinking about seafood... or oysters...?
I wonder if I still have that tin of smoked oysters in the back cupboard... that would go nice with some rice beer.
Wait... rice... grain... rice is a grain... was I eating grain?
Who's pants are these...?
What have I been doing for the past half hour?... God, I hope this is ketchup on my hands...
Tastes more like okonomi sauce... but it's so red...
Well, if it's blood, it's probably not mine...
Oh, wait... I was reading a thread about brains... or grains....no... wait.. I'm still holding my iPad... I'll just look at whatever page it's still open to.
Ugh... sure is a lot of blood on it.
Grain!... Bah... Render grain... that's not funny... why do I always try to be funny?... am I that needy for attention?
No, I should turn over a new leaf and be serious and not write so much nonsense and make lame jokes or attempts at satire.
Imagine if I wrote down everything I was just thinking, like some insane William Faulkneresque rambling stream of consciousness soliloquy?
Who in their right mind would do that and why must you subject people to that sort of thing?...
Wait... How did I get back in the house?... Why is there a pony in the kitchen?
Forget it, I'm going to just post that I really don't mind grain or something like that..."
But now I see that I probably shouldn't have second guessed myself and should have written something more thoughtful or at least rambling.
If not for the other forumites with a proclivity for self punishment, for future generations who won't fully understand how stupid these times are.
I'll keep that in mind for next time... but thank you for reminding me to be true to myself or at least to my particular brand of insanity.