SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2017 Noise Grain Issue

While I'm not a Visualize user I can give you a few suggestions  ... Real objects never have infinitely sharp edges, there will always be a small highlight on an edge. Unless there is actually a small radius/fillet or chamfer on an edge in the model, the renderer must add that in. Its possible the Visualize renderer has the ability to do this, check the rendering settings.

The second consideration is the light to dark range, or levels. Sometimes there is a rendering setting called "Gamma" which can help. Otherwise is possible to process after in Photoshop or similar as shown.

Hi Fred,

Perhaps you can be a bit more explicit...  I cannot tell from your comments, exactly what "look" you are trying to achieve or exactly what you feel is lacking or wrong with the render.

In the subject you refer to "noise/grain" and in the comments you refer to "lack of detail". These seem like 2 different subjects to me.

When it comes to rendering, in my experience what is "good" or "bad" is largely subjective.. 

A lack of contrast can be as simple as an environment choice.  ie the choice of HDR environment that is providing the lighting and reflections.

Meanwhile, Chris Dordoni is spot on.  In the real world, machined parts never truly have "sharp edges" despite often being modeled that way. Visualize has a solution for this in the "Corner Radius" setting.  Select a part, in part mode, and you will see a setting for this in the model tree.  You likely only need a very small value here...usually 1mm or less depending on the size of your geometry.

Regarding actual grain/noise; well you have 2 options.  As Chris Cunningham stated, up your pass count to allow the rendering to refine further.  But this may be a bit prohibitive given your hardware.  In which case, I've found the built in noise-removal tools in applications like PhotoShop or Bridge or even the free Gimp can do wonders to smooth out noise in a few seconds.

FYI - DPI settings won't make a difference.  Since DPI setting only serves as a reference of how the overall pixel size (Width * Height) refers to physical image sizes.  But the general notion of rendering an image at a larger size, then scaling it down, can sometimes squish out noise.  Although it comes at the cost of increased render times so I'd still advise looking at noise removal filters instead.

HTH,

Ron

Hi Fred,

The "noise" word in your title attract me here. Since I just start to learn to use Visualise and find lots of noise which puzzle me a lot. After some search, I gain some understanding which might also useful for you.

In Visualise, there are two mode "fast" and "accurate" which are very different.

The fast mode use "biased renders" whose algorithm  are simplified which make it more easy to get rid of the noise and come to the convergence. This kind of "biased renders" will sacrifice the quality of the image but be more faster. Usually, the biased renders are already very excellent (for example simple case as the desk you show).

The accurate mode, on the other hand, use "physically accurate rendering tool", which don't take the "shortcuts" in the algorithm. This will give better quality of the image. Maybe this is only meaningful since GPU function in Visualise make the rendering much faster. But, using the accurate mode, the algorithm is more difficult to get rid of the noises. You can find more related information at the attached Youtube link, at 3:43. SOLIDWORKS Visualize - Lesson 1 - YouTube

Simple conclusion is that, when we just want to take the advantage of the high calculation speed of GPU, we can use the fast mode of the Visualise to replace PV360. In some cases, when we want better image quality in complex designs/structures, we can use the accurate mode of Visualise, but remember to take long enough passes to get rid of the noises. (There are some saying that 1000 passes is enough, but my experience is 1000 is still too less)

Here are some other links which might be related:

Visualize - questions and user experiences so far

Noise & Quality Issues

What is the exact difference between 'Fast Mode' and 'Accurate Mode'?

Maybe these doesn't solve your "sharpness" issue. But hope these information can help you on the "noise" part. Please correct me if I understand it wrong, since I am quite new.

Tianping