Metallic surface looks terrible in animation

[sboerup]

Hi Keyshot community, this is my first post here even though I've owned Keyshot for about 16 months now.  I have LOVED using it, especially for not ever having had experience with 3D rendering, period.

I purchased Pro and Animation back in 2013, and while it's fantastic for stills, I'm having a frustration with textures appearing real in animations.  I'm not sure if its a quality setting I'm not doing, or if its a lighting or material thing, so I wanted to reach out here.

The product I'm rendering uses two materials: silicone rubber, and nickel-coated magnets.  When I render still images, the texture looks pretty good.  But with the animations, it looks pretty terrible.

Computer used: new Mac Pro, 3.0ghz 8-core with 32gb RAM, dual D500 GPUs.  I bought it specifically to make animations quicker in Keyshot...hoping a GPU based render engine is coming!

Render #1 - this was a low-res version so I could get a feel for how the camera movements looked.  It was very obvious that the metallic surfaces on the magnets looked TERRIBLE in video.
File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdzjwbcbnxfj3s7/MagSphere.3.mp4?dl=0

Render #2 -  Thinking that it was a quality setting and/or resolution, I increased the render size to 1920x1080, and set the quality to above 200 "samples per frame".  Normally I do stills at like 80-100, and they look awesome.

The render took about 15 hours overnight using all 16 cores available, so I figured the quality should have been nearly maxed at this point.  But, the metallic surface still looks pretty fake. 
File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bv33xkh4lmi6syr/MagSphere.4.mp4?dl=0


Is there something I'm not doing right?  The material used for the metallic surfaces was out of the Keyshot Library > Metal > Nickel Satin.  For references, this is exactly what the metal should look like: http://www.amazon.com/Neodymium-Magnets-inch-Disc-N48/dp/B001KUURP2/ref=pd_sim_indust_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0F7DKVMBPTPP7J4B6MDJ

I'd love any tips or tricks on making these look better!

[Esben Oxholm]

Could you post a still image rendering as well?
Would be nice to have to compare with the animations.

Remember that environment has a impact on how the material look.
Comparing the nickel satin material to your reference image, the nickel satin looks too rough. Try dialing the roughness to something like 0,06 and make sure that you have an environment with contrasty sections in order to have something for the metal to reflect.

[Ed]

To expand on what Esben is saying, I think the issue is you have nothing else in the scene to reflect onto the magnets.

You are not taking a photo of the magnet, rather you're taking a photo of what the magnet reflects.

If you have nothing else in the scene, or your environment looks like a cloudy day, your magnets will look white.

I would make a large curved surface (outside of camera range) and apply a photo to it.  Now you'll have reflections.

See my Feb 2015 Webinar where I show using this technique at the 38 minute time mark:
https://www.keyshot.com/learning/webinars/

Ed Ferguson

[sboerup]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

I'm aware of the need for having the magnets reflect something.  My background is in photography, so lighting objects is second nature to me.

I guess the poor quality I'm talking about is that the texture of the magnets, in motion, looks like it doesn't move with the motion.  Rather it looks like its a hole (or a layer mask in photoshop terms) looking through to a background layer of a metallic surface.  Its not that it doesn't look realistic in a single frame, because any screen grab from the video looks fine to me.  But add motion, and a single point of texture on the left side of the metal looks as if it travels to the right side as it moves.  Not sure how else to describe it

[Ed]

Yeah - That's very odd.  The one animation looks like the texture is stationary, as if the magnet cavity is a window.

I've done many animations of jewelry using brushed metal, and the surface texture moves with the part as expected.

I would try an animation with the black body hidden - just show the magnets alone.  Seeing the texture behavior along the length of the magnet might help define the issue.

You can also post your bip file and I'll have a look if you wish.

Ed Ferguson

[guest84672]

Development thinks that it may be a video compression issue. Can you try to render out the individual images and then create the movie yourself, to see whether this improves the representation of the texture?

[sboerup]

I hid the black body per Ed's recommendation to see if it would show any additional information.

I also adjusted the roughness of the metal to make it more glossy, since this is now more accurate to the actual object in my hand.  The roughness was too high in the previous renderings, but this is a bit more accurate.

However, you can still see the funky rendering issues in the last second, on the small flat surface of the object.
File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhza1kdzuj1a16m/MagSphere.9.mp4?dl=0

I'll try exporting the frames and then rendering myself.

[sboerup]

Also, I just noticed while watching the video in the browser (via Dropbox), it looks a lot more compressed in quality.  Might be better to download the file and play the original than viewing the browser version.

[Esben Oxholm]

However, you can still see the funky rendering issues in the last second, on the small flat surface of the object.
File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhza1kdzuj1a16m/MagSphere.9.mp4?dl=0

I'll try exporting the frames and then rendering myself.

I actually have experienced this myself too, also when rendering out the frames individually... but try anyways.
I also remember an old post about it, where someone had the same issue.

I don't know why it occurs, it just seems to be the way KeyShot handles noise... Fine for still images, but I agree, It's not a desirable look for animations.
Hope it's getting better in KS6 

[sboerup]

Alright, here is some more testing I did this morning.

It's not a compression problem based on these tests, because the single frames it exports also show the same thing.
Video file of just a short frame range, in higher resolution: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j5fmuhrd3o4onmi/MagSphere.13.mp4?dl=0

Also a GIF (attached as well): https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fkmjtadx1kyxaa/MagSphere.150.gif?dl=0

[Ed]

My little test doesn't seem to have the "stationary noise" issue.

Ed Ferguson

[sboerup]

Thanks Ed.  May I ask what render settings were used?  I've always just used the "max samples", never used the advanced settings.

[Ed]

Here are my settings for the animation:

Animation render took 2.8 hours.

HDRI = Conference Room

Material = Zinc Yellow  (I modified by adding a brushed finish Normal Map)

Ed Ferguson

[sboerup]

OK I did an export as I left work, and just clicked on the advanced quality settings, and that seemed to fix the trick instantly.  Thanks for the help everyone!

Fixed example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/51r957b0819ap5e/MagSphere.18.mp4?dl=0