why does my rendering look so lo-fi

Question

I followed a tutorial to create sparks.

However, my rendering looks so lo-fi. Is there something I am missing? Is it graphic card? This is M1 Max or is there a setting I need to configure.

Answer 1

Noise comes primarily from not enough sampling. So most likely, unless you messed up with other things, you only have to play with these settings:

You set your viewport render to 1024 samples, which can be enough when coupled with some denoise, but you also have 0.1 noise threshold which makes the adaptive-sampling drop samples really quickly. Enabling the viewport denoise can help, but might look a bit mushy because there is still too much noise for it to give a good result:

Using OpenImageDenoise instead of OptiX's denoise can help a bit, though it's slower, don't bother with it if your render are already slow.

The next step is to add more samples. But disable the noise Threshold so to really see what your sampling looks "at its best". If you struggle with performances, use ⎈ CtrlB to draw a render region that restrains the render to that specific area. Then ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltB to remove the render region.
Once you found a value that seems to give something you like, enable Noise Threshold again and fine tune it to keep a nice looking render but faster.
Personally I never find 0.1 decent enough, I rather start as low as 0.01 and go even lower for the scenes that need it. Sometimes, I keep it disabled because it can't help but remove details I need.

Don't forget to adapt your render settings after that.

Answer 2

I would enable Motion Blur as you mentioned in another question and add some glare. Note that the Bloom setting only works in Eevee renders and Material Preview mode. If you want to have glare/bloom in Cycles you need to add it in the Compositor with Glare nodes:

^{Cycles render, denoiser enabled, max 32 samples}

Note: 1) the Particle Info node works only in Cycles. 2) You need to render out an image first then you can see it in the compositor.

An alternative for Eevee would be to use Simulation Nodes (Blender 3.6) and create your own particle system with some vector math. Then you can use the age attribute in the shader and render it with Eevee (example tutorial).

Answer 3

Assuming you haven't messed with the particle system , first enable the denoiser in the viewport , then adjust lighting settings : Intensity , Light paths , Reflections . This might help a little bit

Answer 4

Turn on the denoiser located under sampling -> viewport options.