Shadow Banding and Strange Shadow Behavior Tweet

[brianzero]

Hi All,

Im having some problems with strange shadow banding and general weird results in dark areas on several different projects. In the frame buffer, the shadows look perfectly fine, and when I save them out, they show the strange banding problem. Does anyone have a guess as to why??

[elsksa]

Hi brianzero,

Are you exporting to PNG 8-bit per channel by any chance? The banding would likely occur when doing so. The industry-standard recommendation is to export in OpenEXR 16-bit Linear-Scene-Referred (unclamped) if the post-production software used does support OpenEXR. TIFF would be the alternative in non-EXR supported applications.

[brianzero]

Yes, youre right about exporting a PNG, but they were 16 bit PNG's. I wonder if that made any difference? Its interesting to note that for other older versions of Octane I never had this issue.

I will give the EXR 16 a try. Thats what I would have exported had this been an animation for After Effects. My only reservation about EXR's is that they dont play nice with Photoshop.

[brianzero]

I tried EXR and get the same banding as the PNG's. Could this be a bug specific to this version of the Max plugin?

[elsksa]

Could you attach the EXR + the EXR export settings (including the "color management" settings)?

[brianzero]

I started a brand new empty scene, and imported my 'problem' Max scene to erase any weird settings that might have gotten checked. I also deleted and defaulted all settings, even with the camera.

The exported EXR from the new scene had the same banding problems.

[elsksa]

Thank you for the screenshot that contains the settings used.

Unfortunately, I can not rely on your screenshots to inspect the file(s), exported from Octane. It would be ideal if you could export a 16-bit Linear-scene-referred EXR and attach it so I or other forum members can look into it.

[brianzero]

Lets see if this zipped EXR works as an attachment:

And I might have to supply my Max file to see what's going on? And I should mention, if I open a Max file that worked and rendered with no banding in previous versions of Octane, it renders in the current version with banding. Im thinking of rolling back my plugin.

[paride4331]

Hi brianzero,
your file looks good opening with photoshop.
Are you sure that it is not an issue in AE?
Regards
Paride

[brianzero]

Paride, take that image and flatten it. Youll instantly see the banding better. I can see the banding on that image as I type. Not only that, the shadows are much darker than in the VFB.

I am also getting this exact error on another project. I am ONLY getting these errors in the newest plugin, again more banding, shadows extrememly dark, shadows separating.

Ive used Octane for since it was released, and Ive never seen this error in any of the 1000's or renderings Ive created.