Depth blur - so noisy!

[bleepurchin]

Hey guys,

It feels like this question has probably been asked before so I'm sorry if this is going over stuff again but...

Is there anyway to reduce the amount of noise in the depth of field blur without putting up the samples to really high values?

I have 2 x GTX 980s and I'm having to wait over half an hr for a 1920 frame to render which is barely usable.... this seems pretty insane!

I had thought of using the Z-depth pass in post instead, however the banding in the white-black gradient is awful on the 32 bit render and there doesn't seem to be anyway of getting a smooth result so I would rather do the depth in render.

Thanks,
Luke.

[bleepurchin]

Nothing for this... ?

[bepeg4d]

hi,
it's a bit hard to answer your question without have seen an image
where is the noise? in the highlights?
have you already tried with the Hot Pixel Removal at 0.65?
Anyway, I never see any banding in z-depth pass, maybe some wrong setting from you
ciao beppe

[slepy8]

The banding is not a problem of getting bad results with DOF in post.
It's the DOF effect of such software as AE or Fussion -these are not acurate and give the shitty borders. Banding is no problem with Z-depth pass - belive me.

If it comes to depth blur and noise - yes it's a bit noisy and you need more samples. If you have a dark scene you'll need even more samples to clean it out.

But!

After some tim espent on thinkingabout the process I figured out how to get a good looking DoF in post without buying Lenscare from Frischluft. (It's the best DoF plugin made so far [not mentioning specific production studios scripts, which are only available for those production studios obviously ] )

I'll be compositing in Fusion a movie in a few days. I'll pass here some screenshots of the nodes setup. Or maybe a quick tutorial if I have time.

[bleepurchin]

I never see any banding in z-depth pass, maybe some wrong setting from you
ciao beppe

I wish someone would tell me what setting produce a Z depth pass that does not contain banding!

I have all my settings set to 32 bit and I am using tiffs.... what am i missing please?

[aoktar]

Sorry,
are you ignoring my answers? I said that there is not any banding issue if you use correct settings and correct viewer.

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=49230

[bleepurchin]

Sorry,
are you ignoring my answers? I said that there is not any banding issue if you use correct settings and correct viewer.

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=49230

... no of course I'm not ignoring your answer aoktar, but you havent told me what the 'correct settings' are so how is this an answer to my question?

I have said already that I have my settings all at 32 bit and my file is tiff. I would appreciate some guidance as to what else I am meant to do. I am seeing the correct result in the picture viewer but I am getting banding in the tiff file as shown below.

[aoktar]

Render buffer: Float or Float(tonemapped) and saving as 32 or 16 bit.
Nothing else required as i remember correctly. Also you see correct results in Picture Viewer. I don't know which software are you using to check but PS or AE can't display well 32bit images. Make a search in forum for banding, there was some discussion and see conclusion.

[bleepurchin]

I will have a look at the settings more then... but it seems it may be After Effects and Adobe in general that is at fault... which is pretty damning considering how important they are as post production tools. Why are they bad at reading 32 bit files.... find it odd no one has said this to me before.

[brasco]

It's not that they can't handle 32bit , it's that they need to be configured correctly, can you save out a test file and we can maybe help find the issue. It's usually adding in a color profile that causes problems.

cheers
brasc