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@Barbult : I think crashworship and the creator don't get along well. I think I can't reconcile them, but all I learn here on CPU and Mac users might allow me to help users in this situation more easily. But yes, the procedure he is using is super weird for a "lighting" hdr, but can be understood for a "background" hdr, the light being made by something else... It's not obvious that being 32 bit is not enough for an HDR lighting (until you use it for lighting). :)
I haven't found the magic answer to getting rid of the large white blocky fireflies in exr files where I can't use the denoiser. (At 16K resolution, my GPU does not have enough memory to do the denoiser). Increasing the quality and min samples has not helped for me. After about 30 iterations, the rendering goes to 100%. The render continues to the min samples I specified, but the render does not get any better. I set extreme values and let it render for 2 hours one time. The white blocky noise was still there. I'll need to try again with a more controlled experiment and see if I can figure out if I was doing something wrong.
This happens in general when you are in environment with many glossy reflections. This is the case for instance of old 3delight sets for which the gloss in not well handled for Daz. Or it can be the shaders themselves (metallic plates of a sci fi environment). For the exr, the DS render - longer - settings themselves can eventually enhance a white spots, but it will not solve everything. There are different approaches to solve this issue : the shader approach (try to lower the glossiness of enough surfaces if it comes from that), the "denoiser during render" approach (check activate denoiser and pray for the GPU to accept that), the "denoiser after render" approach (not photoshop, since you would loose you "real" 32 bits, but Chat GPT - should we trust that, but I could not find the info on my own - answered that GIMP 2 denoiser conserved the real bit precision of each pixel after denoising and does not make fake 32 bits). Maybe there are others but that's all I have in mind right now.
@Totte
Yeah, that was my impression. Those renders using the EXR Creator script took much less time than I thought they would. On my iMac with a 16gig graphics card, for most of my renders, I'm usually letting them bake for about an hour or more. Typically my renders are in the 4.1k range and depending on lighting can take at least half an hour with daylight and not a lot of mesh complexity like dforce hair, not a lot of genesis 8 or higher characters with elaborate props and clothing, etc. If the scene is darker and there's a lot more geometric complexity, I will let the render bake for several hours or more.
Thar is why I listed page 6 of the documentation the procedures to improve render quality (maybe also elsewhere in the doc). More details in the doc but super short version here:
Method 1 : increase min samples up to several hundreds if necessary and increase converged ratio.
Method 2: use 50000 as the luminance corrective factor tab 2. Then either use something around 0.0001 as environment intensity. (Make sure that Daz studio render settings have a goid converged ratio for this method 2), or asjust exr exposure in photoshop.
Method 3, in case the two firts ones fail, use the png xEV creator as explained in its corresponding section and annex of the the documentation.
@V3Digitimes: I willdo some tests to see what it changes.
@V3Digitimes: OK this is the render setting the scene has (set by the sky used), which resulted in 50 iterartions.
How did it look after 50 iterations?
@Totte :I said MIN samples not max. The other dial... (edit ;maybe you knew and it was only the firdt part of your answer?)
edit : 2 or 3 post under I describe new render settings which can allow you to reach the exact number of iterations you want.
I tested again. It doesn't matter how long I let it run, or how many min samples I set, or what quality I set. After about 30 iterations it declares 100% complete, and additional time and samples do not show any detectable improvement in the resulting HDR. In fact letting it run for an hour and 45 minutes actually resulted in more of the big white fireflies. The only thing that I have found that gets rid of them is the denoiser, which limits the size I can render. I have not tried changing surface settings in the scene or using GIMP 2, which I don't have. My version of Photoshop does not seem able to denoise 32 bit images. So, for now, I have been creating mostly 8K HDRs so I can use the denoiser. I think the denoiser makes things kind of soft. It really looks like it was not 100% converged, even though it says it is.
To get rid of persistant fireflies in Studio try setting the Nominal Luminance. Try 1500 and then lower or raise it. If there are still fireflies at 1500 then lower it until they all go; if there are no Fireflies at 1500 then raise it until they start to appear then lower it to a setting where they are no longer visible.
Yes, as I said (maybe, I'm not sure), for the scenes which presents fireflies, this is scene specific and increasing the min samples cannot solve your issue alone, there will be remaining fireflies (I managed to improve a bit with more samples, but never solve). This is due to Daz Studio render, and I don't think it's possible to handle it with the exr creator or other render settings alone. ther things you can test is to:
- use the png xEV creator. Each image, if it has fireflies, can be cleaned before being recombined in photoshop. This is why the png xEV creator is here, for the cases of figure which cannot be handled differently (said differently, when everything else failed).
If you want absolutely to try to stay with the exr creator you can try this:
- use 50 000 as the corrective luminance factor (tab 2, the dial which is 3 by default), and, since you have photoshop, lower the exposure of the resulting exr, and save over (if you want to use the third tab to create presets). Or after rendering, don't go in photoshop and reload exr as is but adjust environment intensity around 0.0001. Please note I don't think it will help with that but I may be wrong.
- work on your lights and materials. Something in your scene makes these fireflies popup and it's due to light and matter interaction. Glossy surfaces can be an issue, as well as some lights (for lights this is less clear but a user PM me that actually changing his lights helped a lot). One of the ideas is to avoid small bright areas, wether they are reflective or emissive.
- I also wonder if the Noise Degrain Filttering and its sub settings would have an influence on the exr...I never tried.... I won't be able to test it in the short term.
@Totte and @crashworship. For information, I have tested this morning a new way to increase render duration, all via render settings, and where you can set the EXACT number of iterations you want for the exr creator:
1. OBLIGATORY: Set "Max Time" to 0 AND "Render Quality Enable" to OFF : this way, the number of iterations (samples) is only determined by "MAX samples".
2. Set the MAX samples at the value you want, if you made "1." then the render will stop at this exact numer of iteration, but you can safely cancel it at any iteration you want (provided you reached the Update Interval at least once).
If it works for CPU users (it works for me "only cpu"), it might be a good solution to include in a 1.2 version of the exr creator, and it would anyway benefit any user for a better control of the number of iterations.
It's rendered with a default camera. The exr file was created with EXR Creator's spherical camera. Once it's been created, I just loaded the file to my render settings environment map and then added a default Studio camera. There was no zoom. Regarding the size of the map, using 12k size put a very heavy load on my render. It's like adding ten genesis 8.1 characters with hair, elaborate clothes, lots of props and lights. All of the aftermarket HDRI environment maps in my library that I use are sized at 4k. I'm just taking the EXR Creator's 12k map and reducing it to 4k and saving it as a 32 bit exr file. There are no other changes.
@crashworship : If you want to make 4k size and you want more samples in your exr, you have the two very easy techniques to increase the render duration and "precision" (via the number of sample launched, i.e. of iterations), all located in Daz Studio Render Settings Tab, Progressive Rendering group. The "min sample" already explained 4 or 5 times here and also in the doc is maybe less clear (because it requires to remove some limits) than the "Calculate the exact iterations number I want", which I redescribe here :
1. OBLIGATORY: Set "Max Time" to 0 AND "Render Quality Enable" to OFF : this way, the number of iterations (samples) is now only determined by "MAX samples".
2. Set the MAX samples at the value you want, and if you made the first step (1.), then the render will stop at this exact number of iteration, but you can safely cancel it at any iteration you want (provided you reached the Update Interval at least once) if you find it too long, the render will be saved anyway. (edit, plus you'll have a clear progress bar representing the percentage of the total samples you wanted calculated)
Okay, so taking Digitime's excellent advice about render settings adjustments and making a render that went for about an hour and a half at 16k I got excellent detail. There are some firefly artifacs but those are easily delt with in Photoshop using the healing brush or perhaps using noise degraining in the rendersettings. The 16k file is 1.4 gigs, however. Reducing it to 4k made the file size a manageble 90 megs but all the detail was lost. So I'm making some progress but using a 1.4 gig file as an environment map with upper tier Genesis characters, hair, props, prop environments etc., which I haven't tried yet, may prove a strain on my rendering resources.
And, I missnamed the 16k file as a 12k file by mistake. It's a 16k file.
Good to know my advice worked. Now, for the size I don't know, it never really bothered me, but I understand it can bother you. I don't know if there are software allowing to reduce the file size, the solution must be in a compromise. Maybe resaving with Photoshop as an hdr or with different compression options? Honestly that's just an idea like that, I never need that. I don't know how the file physical size, once loaded for render, impacts the memory, but if it is like it is for textures for instance, mainly (only?) the number of pixels impact on the memory required for the render, and not (much less?) the image physical size on the hard drive.
So now everything is a matter of compromise, for this I can not help you, these are your personal choices. On my side I think I'll wait 2/3 weeks more to see if new issues pop up, and I'll go for a 1.2 update where people will be able to choose, if they want to, their exact number of samples used during the render directly in the interface.
I just did a quick test exr using your render advice and the a quick edit in Photoshop to 4K then two comparison renders in Studio. I didn't have time to add some content. But rendering just the map showed promise.
One other thing I might suggest with an update if possible is for the render to be available as a separate window which is usually how I render my scenes. It's a lot easier to know when a render is working and acceptable if you can see the image if it renders. If this isn't possible, don't worry about it.
@Fishtales think you have given me excellent advice. It will require some more experimentation and tests, but this look promising. Thanks!
Thank you for the update, @V3Digitimes - now it is much easier to get the desired view from your camera.
I have made some experiments with HDRIs with dimensions 8192 pixel wide and 4096 pixels high (made from UltraScenery).
Below are the renders which are using such HDRI - first with dimensions 1920 by 1080 pixels
Next is the render 960 by 540 pixels upscalled two times
Unfortunately, there is some degradation of details on the second image - due to upscalling.
Below is the same scene as above, but rendered with HDRI with dimensions 16384 pixels wide and 8192 pixels high.
Some fireflies were fixed with healing brush in the Gimp.
I think for full HD renders (1920 by 1080) the 16K HDRIs provide for me the acceptable quality.
Crashworship, I'll have a look, but for some reasons to long to explain seeing the render while it is done will bring nothing to you, you would only see a black render.
@Barbult, if you manage to do something with Fishtales recommendation, please let me know, I'll have a deeper look at how to add it to the script and/or the documentation...
@Artini : OK thanks for sharing this info - and you renders. I rather tend to use 10/12 k, but it's rather to gain room on my computer because I compulsively keep everything (plus I rarely render 1980p). I wonder, for the 8k, is the original hdr clean (I mean are you sure the fuzzy look comes from Daz Studio "zooming in" the hdr due to final image resolution, or do you think it could be fixed with more render samples for the 8k hdr?)
I remind here just in case the "new" the recommended technics to perfectly control the render samples (iterations) of the exr creator :
1. OBLIGATORY: Set "Max Time" to 0 AND "Render Quality Enable" to OFF : this way, the number of iterations (samples) is now only determined by "MAX samples".
2. Set the MAX samples at the value you want, and if you made the first step (1.), then the render will stop at this exact number of iteration, but you can safely cancel it at any iteration you want (provided you reached the Update Interval at least once) if you find it too long, the render will be saved anyway. (edit, plus you'll have a clear progress bar representing the percentage of the total samples you wanted calculated)
Fishtales' advice is spot on! I have created my sharpest and cleanest HDRs by using Nominal Luminance. I am able to create 16K HDRs with denoise OFF (so no smearing of detail and no excess GPU memory usage), Render Quality Enable ON. With appropriate selection of Nominal Luminance it can eliminate all the white blocky fireflies. This is the only advice that eliminated those fireflies for me. The correct value for Nominal Luminance probably varies based on the lighting used to create the HDR. So far, in my experiments I recommend starting your experimentation with Nominal Luminance values around 0.2, when using the V3D HDR Creator. The 1500 value that Fishtales mentioned is appropriate for "regular" renders, but the V3D Luminance Corrective Factor throws that value out the window. If you set Nominal Luminance too high, you still get fireflies. If you set it too low, you clip the lighting too much. It takes some time to experiment.
Thanks for these additionals tips.
I have already tried the other created HDRIs, even with min samples set to 500 and still got blurry backgrounds.
I have no idea, how to improve the view of renders made with 8K HDRI.
Would be nice to have a possibility to use resolution of the HDRI to the max,
but I do not know, how to achieve it.
If I change the camera zoom, I got the same image, only placement of objects at zero position will change.
By the way, I have tried to change Nominal Luminance, even to 3000 and have not noticed any changes
on the renders, so I have skipped that and use only the default value of it.
Another image made with the previous HDRI, only rotated with the Dome Rotation.
You are right when you say it has to do with the lighting used and it can take a while to get the right setting for every render but I found that the 1500 starting point seems to be just right for my renders :)
I would point out here that if you are using a volume for mist/fog then the setting can see that as fireflies and fix it as it sees it as white dots in the image :)
Also the strength of light and glossiness of surfaces can make a big difference in a render where no matter the setting there will still be fireflies so then you have to lower the light intensity, change the temperature or lower the gloss setting on the surfaces. It can also darken a render by eliminating some of the reflected light from areas that you want to keep it, as in a night scene.
@barbult : super I'll have to have a deeper look! Thanks a lot for sharing this here, and a super thanks to Fishtales for his excellent advice.
@Artini... Have you tried, to launch many samples (iterations) on the 8K, using the technics in my previous post - to see if you manage to "zoom in" more easily? Well at the end, everything is a matter of compromise, how big your final image will be implies how big your hdr 'safe size' dome must be, but you can choose to render smaller. Then for the quality you can either let the creator make "short" renders (less precise) or use the technics in my previous post to increase the render precision by launching more samples (and in this case you may eventually remove the denoiser too)... This is all a matter of compromise, and this is a personal choice, I can only try and give the tools you need to apply your own choices.
@Fishtales : thank you for this precious advice, I did not know this technics, and thanks for the warnings about its side effects!!!
I agree with @barbult - Nominal Luminance = 0.2 gives HDRIs without fireflies.
The other problem I have with the 12K (12000 by 6000 pixels) HDRI used on the render below,
that I could not get enough light on the Genesis 9 character there.
I have increased Environment Intensity to 7, but the character is still dark, despite environment looks bright.