Rendering issue with material

[Numb69]

OK so ive been working on a plastic type material, I like pretty much the result of it but there's some issues or maybe its just me, correct me if im wrong.
Below are two renders. The first one is a close-up,it looks good to me,thats how I want it. In the second pic its a render from far. Now I dont kno if it's the rendering is set up wrongly or if its normal, but the noise/flakes looks bigger. Especially the white ones and thats exactly what i dont want, they are supposed to be more subtle. How can I fix that..?!

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

What shader are you using?
What are your render settings?

Achim

[Chris_TC]

I'd say this is entirely down to your sampling level. To reduce the noise you need to use more glossy samples or higher anti-aliasing.

[Numb69]

Thx for the response..
Now im really going crazy. The scene which I rendered the previous examples crashed, and now I can't reproduce the exact same material. One thing I know, I saved the material BUT I noticed that the render changes everytime depending on the lighting setup, that means the light setup gives it a different result.. Below are the setups and new renders. I really tried every possible way to reproduce the look of the other renders, nothing worked, every time its just wrong and different. I also noticed that FG makes the material look different.
If maybe one of you could explain me how all this thing work and why it looks so different with FG/without FG/with environement for replections or without....Im really lost

I only recently started playing with materials and nodes, so im really a noob in all this

[Maximus]

Hello, there are many factors that comes into play when using shiny surfaces.
shiny metals and plastic are highly dependant from the environment around, you need to find a good lighting setup, hdri, environment, and always use a mia_photographic_exposure lens, it makes the difference.

Here is how i would proceed:

1) create an environment where you put your hdri
2) add a photographic exposure in the pass options using the Lens in "Overwrite camera lens shaders" mode
3) setup the mia_exposure_photographic parameters (this is really important and makes a huge different in rendering shading/lighting/colors.
Try to start with Cm2_factor 10000, Camera shutter 35, F_Number 14, vignetting 0, burn highlights 0 , crush blacks 0 and use the gamma 2.2 (hopefully you have setup a correct linear workflow in your preferences)
4) when you are going for Metal materials (this is what it looks to me) you need to make few adjustments to the Architectural material.
First of all use always the word "None" in the Texture space field, type it, because it produces some weird reflections, it is an old bug never fixed.
5) always use Raytrace mode as primary rays in Rendering. filter box 1 for preview, Mitchell 4 for final.
6) always use Automatic mode on final gather, and activate the advanced options with refinement passes, Filter size 0.


Also use the "Metal Material" check, and View Angle Dependent (BRDF) in "Default (IOF)" mode. Then rise up the Index of Refraction at 30.

i've added a scene you can look at, its easier to explain if you see it, i've used for the illumination some HDRI from sIBL set, Apartment one.

Notice that the most important thing when it comes to those kind of renderings is shaders, lighting setup, gamma setup, photographic lens shader.

I hope i've been of some help, let me know if you need further help.

here is the scene and a quick render i did



Also if you want to share your scene i'll take a look.

Cheers,

Max

[ActionArt]

One other simple thing I noticed is I think your "sample contrast" (the three sliders) are set way too high. .2 is OK for previews but for final render it should be about .05 to .06 (from my experience).

[Chris_TC]

The property page of your architectural material shows reflection settings that appear to be way too low for plastic. You are using 0.2 reflectivity. This gets multiplied by the facing reflectivity and the perpendicular reflectivity. So your effective reflectivity is 0.04 (facing) and 0.2 (perpendicular).

Despite this, your material looks pretty good, so I wonder whether you overexposed the environment in order to get those reflections to show up? The overbright FG render also suggests an environment that's WAY too bright.

[Numb69]

@Maximus
Thanx a lot man!! You really helped me understand the workflow,now i have a better understanding of how to do things.
Altho i have a lot of questions regarding the render settings u pointed out, I'll do y job and do research over the net
There's only one thing I wanted to ask you. If u can or if u now of a site that explains in depth how to setup an IBL manually that will be great!
I only recently tried sIBL and as awesome as it is, I would like to actually understand how to setup a lighting scene rather then just push a button..
Anyways thanx again!
Here's is my scene if u still wanna look at it:http://hotfile.com/dl/121454595/8e733ca ... 7.scn.html

@Chris_TC
It looks low i kno but thats the settings that worked best when I was doing test. I'm sure my light/hdri setup is not the best thing i did lol. I'm still working on that. As of the overbright its entirely because of the environement, I really didnt adjust much things, just plugged and hdri on the sphere and turned on FG..
altho I still dont get why its so bright..the actual hdri is a studioHDR, that looks ok, i guess I'll have to try a different one

@ActionAr
Thx for the tips ;)

[Maximus]

@Maximus
Thanx a lot man!! You really helped me understand the workflow,now i have a better understanding of how to do things.
Altho i have a lot of questions regarding the render settings u pointed out, I'll do y job and do research over the net
There's only one thing I wanted to ask you. If u can or if u now of a site that explains in depth how to setup an IBL manually that will be great!
I only recently tried sIBL and as awesome as it is, I would like to actually understand how to setup a lighting scene rather then just push a button..
Anyways thanx again!
Here's is my scene if u still wanna look at it:http://hotfile.com/dl/121454595/8e733ca ... 7.scn.html

@Chris_TC
It looks low i kno but thats the settings that worked best when I was doing test. I'm sure my light/hdri setup is not the best thing i did lol. I'm still working on that. As of the overbright its entirely because of the environement, I really didnt adjust much things, just plugged and hdri on the sphere and turned on FG..
altho I still dont get why its so bright..the actual hdri is a studioHDR, that looks ok, i guess I'll have to try a different one

@ActionAr
Thx for the tips ;)

If you need some info, just ask, thats the use of the forum I'll gladly answer if i know!

Here is quick render of the scene you sent me, i've uploaded it to hotfile, i dunno what look you were going for, but anyway for shiny things, you might want to spend some times adjusting reflections manually like for example i did here with 2 portal lights to enhanche the reflection on the dark metal ring, also the environment is very important.

Here is the render with a bit of FXtree correction




and here is the scene:

http://hotfile.com/dl/121468624/fe42c1e/Console.rar.html


The compound you find inside the file is the one i usually use for lightin the scenes, it is based on sIBL system, basically i use 3 maps to light the scene, one is background, one is reflection and one is for FG diffuse.
check out the scene.

I hope i've been of some help
let me know if you need something

Max

[Numb69]

Cool,that looks good to me, I might tweak a bit the material in terms of the flakes but for now that's ok
Thanx for sharing ur IBL setup! altho I wasnt able to open your scene, could it be a 2012 scene? I am running SI 2011, if u could please upload another one, I would appreciate...btw the metals scene worked fine