Volumetric banding.

[Detonatress]

So I've noticed that banding tends to happen a lot with volumetric lights in dark maps (especially dark_void), and then there's also that flipping sky banding problem. After googling a bit, I've found this thread: http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1207569

Now, my question is: Do I really have to go through all of that to get rid of the banding, even when it comes to movies? Or is there a better workaround, or did I miss something regarding volumetric lighting and skybox?

[Zappy]

In my case, the "banding" is because you just haven't had enough samples for the light yet.

[episoder]

*looks at own posters*

add more ambient light. tweak the tonemap. ofc you can loose a lil precision in very dark/black areas. this is probably the tonemap. it's an exponential shade. a curve. the black level goes bogus if you set it up too high. the skybox in hdr has the same problem i think. reminder here that compressed textures effectively only have 16-bit colors instead of 24.

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

In my case, the "banding" is because you just haven't had enough samples for the light yet.

What kind of samples though? If you mean the DoF, it was at 512.
I've tried playing with the noise under volumetric, but the banding still seems to appear, although it isn't noticeable until you zoom in. You can't notice it in pictures if you're on a laptop or have an LCD screen unless you look from the side or have high brightness settings.

Here's light with zero noise strength. 512 DoF. Looks good, yeah?
http://i.imgur.com/YQoouIw.jpg
Well... not exactly. If you zoom in on the left side...
http://i.imgur.com/M4vF2VJ.png

This is at full noise strength and the banding is even more noticeable:
http://i.imgur.com/Q6EIaCe.jpg

Originally posted by episoder:

*looks at own posters*

add more ambient light. tweak the tonemap. ofc you can loose a lil precision in very dark/black areas. this is probably the tonemap. it's an exponential shade. a curve. the black level goes bogus if you set it up too high. the skybox in hdr has the same problem i think. reminder here that compressed textures effectively only have 16-bit colors instead of 24.

I didn't edit the tonemap in some cases and on others I've tried changing tonemap but the problem persists, and it becomes even more obvious when it's in video.

Here is an increase in tonemapscale.
http://i.imgur.com/xqRoDk6.jpg
But if you zoom in... Banding persists although it isn't as noticeable in bright areas.
http://i.imgur.com/C23LYO6.png

Here's a decrease in tonemapscale.
http://i.imgur.com/xtehpQC.jpg
Banding still persists and can be more noticeable even when light is at maximum standard intensity.
http://i.imgur.com/atXwOjx.png

[Zappy]

The banding in that image is when the image goes up or down by exactly 1 RGB unit. And as you can't have "half" units of Red, Green, or Blue, the only way you can get around it is with dithering (or whatever it's called when pixels are checkered, some times more or less than other times), which Source FilmMaker doesn't do. So in said case, I think you have to either accept it, or follow whatever that thread you found says, I'm afraid.

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

The banding in that image is when the image goes up or down by exactly 1 RGB unit. And as you can't have "half" units of Red, Green, or Blue, the only way you can get around it is with dithering (or whatever it's called when pixels are checkered, some times more or less than other times), which Source FilmMaker doesn't do. So in said case, I think you have to either accept it, or follow whatever that thread you found says, I'm afraid.

Well, good thing the map I'm working in has a fog effect of its own. It kind of compensates for the volumetric lights problem.
http://i.imgur.com/4NU3SWu.png
http://i.imgur.com/G7C1n8b.png
I'll just focus on improving the animation in the scene instead then. I just hope I won't run into the banding problem for other scenes.

[Zappy]

If you plan on uploading to YouTube... Don't even care about it. YouTube blurs things when it compresses uploaded videos, so yeah. That's also how I can get on with just 8 samples of motion blur (with a minimal shutter speed) and depth of field (with no aperture) for ambient occlusion. YouTube mostly blurs the "graininess" away. (Though I am going with 32 on my current project.)

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

If you plan on uploading to YouTube... Don't even care about it. YouTube blurs things when it compresses uploaded videos, so yeah. That's also how I can get on with just 8 samples of motion blur (with a minimal shutter speed) and depth of field (with no aperture) for ambient occlusion. YouTube mostly blurs the "graininess" away. (Though I am going with 32 on my current project.)

Are you sure videos don't "ghost' with 8 samples on Youtube? Because I've seen a lot of videos that leave behind "ghosts" when scenes move fast. I try to avoid ghosting as much as possible and having the blur look exactly like in real-life so I stick to 64 MB. I also don't want to change shutter speed since that would pretty much remove most of the blur.

Youtube doesn't seem to fix the banding problem when it comes to dark scenes either. It can be noticed even in End of The Line (above Scout's right arm):
https://youtu.be/6aLjwVVNq4s?t=515

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Detonatress:

I also don't want to change shutter speed since that would pretty much remove most of the blur.

Which is exactly why I change the shutter speed. To remove blur, so I can get away with using less samples. Don't judge me, I only have a laptop, which goes at less than 10 frames per second with some models, ambient occlusion, and one normal light casting shadows. As such, I want to reduce render time when I can.

[episoder]

i don't use mb either. i don't "need"/"like" it. i watch anime. i can choppy.

about youtube banding. ehhh... i dunno. it's compressed video. they don't call it lossy for fun. perhaps the eotl guys didn't dither either. but just that one shot? they have good balanced tones.

the issue looks more like you missing bit depth or color range. i hear that sentence "noise is your friend". you really gotta post process it if you want that long gradients. or use pfm and encode a 10-bit video. does youtube do that? i dunno. but there you have 1024 greys range for that. or save a weird png. i dunno how many bit formats that supports. google it.

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

Originally posted by Detonatress:

I also don't want to change shutter speed since that would pretty much remove most of the blur.

Which is exactly why I change the shutter speed. To remove blur, so I can get away with using less samples. Don't judge me, I only have a laptop, which goes at less than 10 frames per second with some models, ambient occlusion, and one normal light casting shadows. As such, I want to reduce render time when I can.

Ok, I understand your situation. In my case I can always leave the PC to render overnight, the only thing I avoid doing is increasing from 720p to 1080p because I cannot videoedit properly after that, nor can I play back 1080p videos properly and my PC overheats when rendering at 1080p.

Originally posted by episoder:

i don't use mb either. i don't "need"/"like" it. i watch anime. i can choppy.

about youtube banding. ehhh... i dunno. it's compressed video. they don't call it lossy for fun. perhaps the eotl guys didn't dither either. but just that one shot? they have good balanced tones.

the issue looks more like you missing bit depth or color range. i hear that sentence "noise is your friend". you really gotta post process it if you want that long gradients. or use pfm and encode a 10-bit video. does youtube do that? i dunno. but there you have 1024 greys range for that. or save a weird png. i dunno how many bit formats that supports. google it.

I only gave EOTL as example because I wanted to show that even for the best quality stuff, Youtube still won't "fix" the banding. It's not Youtube that causes the banding though, the pngs come out already banded and then when put into VDub they get even more banded.

I don't want to go through the whole dithering process since I'd need to get After Effects or something similar. Perhaps adding two or three volumetrics overlapped and each one in a slightly different position might cover the stripes, which might be a solution but it will depend on the scenes. I don't have many dark scenes planned anyway, but wanted to know for the Merasmus scene in particular. I'll just leave it as it is.

Though I wish SFM had the option for TIFF images instead of PFM...I wonder if they added it to S2FM.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Detonatress:

Perhaps adding two or three volumetrics overlapped and each one in a slightly different position might cover the stripes,

Not if the banding is from 1 RGB unit up or down in colour, as I've already said there's no "half" RGB unit or anything like that.

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

Originally posted by Detonatress:

Perhaps adding two or three volumetrics overlapped and each one in a slightly different position might cover the stripes,

Not if the banding is from 1 RGB unit up or down in colour, as I've already said there's no "half" RGB unit or anything like that.

And how do I make it be the required RGB? It seems like no matter what I do with tonemapscale, the banding is still there, only less noticeable but it's still there.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Detonatress:

And how do I make it be the required RGB?

I really don't know what you mean by that.

[Detonatress]

Originally posted by Vintage:

Originally posted by Detonatress:

And how do I make it be the required RGB?

I really don't know what you mean by that.

I am trying to understand what you mean by 1 rgb up/down in color. Do you mean that each band is because in that spot the RGB unit is halved and then the next is a full RGB unit or that the tonemapscale is set to a half RGB unit and that causes banding?

[Zappy]

No, I mean that the banding is caused by the image going from RGB 43 43 43 to RGB 44 44 44, for example, and as there are only whole units of RGB, it does so over, say 10-20 pixels, which causes the banding. The banding is when you can easily see the changes of RGB colours, and the changes aren't "steady", like it goes 1 unit up in 1 pixel, stays at the same colour for 10-20 pixels, then goes 1 unit up again, rather than going 0.05 units up every pixel or something like that.