Pixelly Flickering Effect in PaintFX render
 

Hello all,

I have a PaintFX tree swaying in the wind, and it has a file texture for bark, as well as a displacement and bump map via the PaintFX attributes. Now when I render it, it looks very pixelly, and the animation flickers in result. I am familiar with the solution to standard flickering, playing with the Filter settings of the texture, but there is no option for that in PaintFX. I did find a feature called Blur Mult, and it did help quite a bit, but there is still some tiny but noticeable and distarcting pixelly flickering in between the twigs and the leaves at the ends of the tree. Also, when I use Blur Mult, I lose the bumpiness of the tree, and the roughness that the displacment gave me (which looked like rough chaotic bark). Also, when I take off the leaves, and twigs and just render the branches, the renderer has problems with the very thin lines at the ends of the branches and they flicker as well. Grrr.... This tree will be in stages of death and life, so I need both to work without flickering.

If anyone can help, that would be greatly appreciated!

-=Ralph=-

P.S. I have Anti-Aliasing on Production Quality.

Can you show is a pic, or possibly a small animation?

Sorry, but I'm not sure what tactic to tell you at the moment because I seemto have a diminishing sense of imagination in my old age:) hehe..

Thanks!

Hello,

Here is a ZIP with a MOV file, a few JPEG's, the scene file itself, and the texture I used.

Here's an index for the JPEG files:

tree_blur.jpg is when I used BLUR MULT attribute.
tree_noblur.jpg is when I didn't.
tree_noleaf.jpg is an example of how thin lines appear.

Hope this helps! :)

Thanks again!

-=Ralph=-

Hello,

Here is one of the JPEG's that are in the ZIP file. You can clearly see the problem on the thin lines, and it gets worse when animated. It looks like a form of pixelly static when the branches move.

-=Ralph=-

Ok, I don't have the time here at work to try this right now, but here starts my trial and error phase for you:

1.Select the camera you are rendering from.
In the Attribute Editor, expand Output Settings
Turn on Depth, then set the Depth Type to Furthest Visible Depth. This prevents "fringing" around geometry.

Lemme know if this helps at all before we continue:)

Worst case, try this:

Increase the number of tube segments (Tubes > Creation) for the brush.

Also, in your brush settings, there should be an attribute for "Edge Antialias".

Turn that to "ON" if it is not.....


(just in case, hehe..)

Hello,

Let me start by saying THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH for all your quick responses and advice! I tired everything you said, and the camera is okay, the segments doesnt do anything except make the tree more detailed (more branches etc.), but when I tried to check ANTI-ALIAS, I noticed it was greyed out. I then remember I has set the Brush mode to MESH, and when I set it back to BRUSH, ANTI-ALIAS was available again. I rendered it and it looked pristine, but too pristine. The bump map and displacement is gone, and only exisits when the brush is set to Mesh. As you said in another post, PaintFX is a POST process and is drawn on top of everything else, so my theory is that this "mesh" that is generated by PaintFX, is not getting to go through the renderer's Anti-Aliasing pass, and is applied afterwards, without any anti-aliasing. The flickering then would actually be aliasing, which actually helps our quest, because now we know what we need to find: A way to anti-alias a PaintFX brush mesh when it is processed after the Maya Renderer's Anti-alias pass already did its work.

Now the question is... how do we do that? :)

Hmmmmmmm.......... There's always more questions. :)

Thanks alot for all your help so far,

-=Ralph=-

No prob:)

I'll check your scene tonight at home:)

Hello,

More good news! That Q&A with Duncan from A|W I mentioned over in the PaintFX thread helped out on this topic too. He suggested to render at double the normal resolution with anti-aliasing turned off, then resize the picture to half its size and it will be bi-filtered in that process (which is like anti-aliasing), resulting in a smooth edge, and more detail for thin branches/twigs! :) I tried it and have attached the results!

Woo Hoo! :bgreen:

I still have to test it with an actual animation, but I will keep you posted on the results of that test as well. I have a feeling it just might work on more than just the outlines. (Crossing fingers and knocking on wood).

Thanks for all your help so far,

-=Ralph=-

Kick a$$!

Yeah, Duncan is the man:)

Can't wait to see your results.