Final Gather Settings - getting fast and good results

I teach 3ds Max and Mental Ray.
I always urge my students to
avoid using the Final Gather presets.

Why?

I think they make the render times
far too long and do not provide good results.

Allow me to demonstrate with a simple scene...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• final
• gather
• gi
• fg
• 3ds
• max
• 3d
• studio
• mentalray
• mental
• ray
• mr
• vray
• fast
• settings
• tutorial
• help
• artifacts
• blotchy
• flickering
• indirect
• illumination

[Maskatroboy]

nice,, result is OK in single frame render, but how about the flicker in animations? my question seem like @ErikRicardoLC

[duophonix]

@Maskatroboy Well usually the final gathers settings are going to be slightly different for when one does animations. Often the flickering will occur if there is a lack of Rays per Final gather or the interpolate over num. fg points. For some scenes, it's possible to cache the FG and GI pass so that it isnt being recalculated for every frame, this is great because it means no flickering and less rendertime. Otherwise, render 5 frames out, cycle through them. If flickering occurs.....

[duophonix]

@duophonix .... then consider raising those values. Usually i dont raise the rays per fg point beyond 500 for an animation, and 200-250 are usually enough for the interpolation. the Interpolation amount depends a lot on the initial FG point density. The higher the FG point density, the more realistic and precise the image, but the more chances of gaps in between the samples, and so with big gaps you need either more rays or better interpolation. I hope this helps.

[ErikRicardoLC]

Great video, no mombojombo, straight to the point and render times are great but how about the flicker in animations?

[duophonix]

@ErikRicardoLC Thanks! someone else has just asked that question also, @Maskatroboy - have a look in the comments for the response.

[Gustavotorqueto]

can you post the configuration of the machine?

[duophonix]

@Gustavotorqueto Intel quad Core i7 - 2600 3.40Ghz (4 physical cores + 4 virtual) - 8GB DDR3 ram, N570GTX Twin Frozr II/OC 1280Mb, windows 7 64bit, MSI P67A-GD55 Motherboard. various hard drives, mostly WD with a combined capacity of 10.5TB

[Nebuchadnezzaurus]

Thanks for bringing attention to these details

[eneagat]

@duophonix thx...i m studying 3ds.... :-o

[duophonix]

@eneagat Your English is excellent! You are correct, when GI is enabled, the number of diffuse FG bounces is 0 (regardless of the value). In my video, I do not reset that value to 0 when gi is enabled to reduce any confusion when someone is seeing what settings I have changed. As far as i know, there is no way to have GI enabled AND have FG Diffuse Bounces. This is because of how GI and FG work together. You dont need any diffuse bounces when GI is on. I hope this helps :-)