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Best PracticesAchieving Photo-Realistic QualityPro Rendering Guide

Pro Rendering Guide

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To achieve “magazine-quality high resolution,” the default settings will leave noise or make textures look painted. Here we explain optimal setting recipes tailored to your PC specs and the “three principles for photorealism” practiced by professionals.

Render Settings

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The current default settings are “preview (confirmation)” lightweight settings.

No matter how much you focus on lighting or materials, with these settings, either “grainy noise” will remain or the denoiser will cause “textures to look flat.”

Photorealism Levels Achievable with Your PC

Depending on your PC’s VRAM capacity, the level of image quality you can achieve differs. Check which category your PC falls into.

Quality LevelTarget VRAMRepresentative GPUsCharacteristicsRecommended Use
Standard: Balance-Focused6GB - 8GBRTX 3060
RTX 4060		Uses denoiser (AI) to finish beautifully in a short time.
Textures are slightly rounded but sufficiently practical.		Daily presentations
Standard PC
Ultimate: Quality-Focused12GB or moreRTX 4070 Ti
RTX 5070/5080		Turns off denoiser and eliminates noise through massive calculations.
Completely reproduces even fine texture irregularities.		Production catalogs
High-end PC
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For First-Timers

Start with “Standard: Balance-Focused”. Even PCs with 8GB VRAM or less can create sufficiently beautiful images. Once familiar, gradually increase sample count to challenge the “Ultimate” level.

Settings Recipe: Standard (Balance-Focused)

Settings for efficiently achieving high quality on standard PCs (VRAM 6-8GB).

✓ Rendering Mode: Pathtracer
✓ Resolution: 1920x1080 (FHD) or 3840x2160 (4K)
✓ Upscaler Algorithm: None (or FSR + Screen Percentage 100)
✓ Use Denoiser: ON ← This is important
✓ Spatial Samples: 32
✓ Temporal Samples: 16 (Total 512 samples)

Key Points

  • Denoiser ON eliminates noise even with low sample count.
  • If taking too long, reduce Temporal to 8 is OK (Total 256 samples).
  • For VRAM 6GB or less, reduce Resolution to FHD.
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Rendering Time Estimate

For RTX 3060 at 4K, approximately 3-8 minutes. FHD completes in 1-3 minutes.

Settings Recipe: Ultimate (Quality-Focused)

High-end PC (VRAM 12GB+) exclusive. Settings that completely reproduce “atmosphere” and “material roughness”.

✓ Rendering Mode: Pathtracer
✓ Resolution: 3840x2160 (4K)
✓ Upscaler Algorithm: None
✓ Use Denoiser: OFF ← This is most important
✓ Spatial Samples: 64
✓ Temporal Samples: 32 (Total 2048 samples)

Key Points

  • Denoiser OFF completely prevents texture degradation.
  • Instead, massive sample count (2048) physically eliminates noise.
  • Fine concrete irregularities and wood grain fibers are perfectly reproduced.
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VRAM Shortage Warning

Using these settings on PCs with 8GB VRAM or less may cause extremely slow rendering or crashes. Try “Standard” settings first, then gradually increase sample count if there’s headroom.

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Rendering Time Estimate

For RTX 4070 Ti at 4K, approximately 10-30 minutes. However, the resulting image is “indistinguishable from photos.”

Why These Settings? (Three Theories)

From here, let’s dig deeper into why the above recipes work through three elements.

1. Samples (Sample Count): The Life of Image Quality

Path Tracing is a technology that “calculates and averages how many times light bounces” repeatedly. The more calculations (sample count), the less noise, and the more beautiful glass, metal, and shadow gradations become.

Problems with Default Settings

Spatial Samples: 32
Temporal Samples: 2
Total: 32 × 2 = 64 samples

This is overwhelmingly insufficient. Grainy noise like static remains.

Relationship Between Sample Count and Denoiser

Total Sample CountDenoiserResult
64 ~ 256ON (Required)AI eliminates noise. Textures slightly rounded.
512ON (Recommended)Standard photorealism. Practically sufficient.
1024OFF possibleLittle noise even without denoiser.
2048OFF (Recommended)Noise completely eliminated. Ultimate texture.
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Pro’s Rule

No time → Lower sample count and Denoiser ON
Best quality → Increase sample count and Denoiser OFF

2. Denoiser: Double-Edged Sword

Denoiser is a feature that “AI forcibly blurs and eliminates noise”.

Advantages

  • Clean appearance even with low sample count
  • Can dramatically shorten rendering time

Disadvantages

  • “Fine concrete irregularities” and “wood grain fibers” are all crushed
  • Becomes plastic-like and smooth, this is the cause of CG-like appearance
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Pro’s Rule

“Brute force with sample count (high load) and turn off denoiser” is the method to produce the most realistic textures. However, when time is limited, Denoiser ON + Samples 512 is also practically sufficient.

3. Upscaler Algorithm: OFF for Still Images

FSR and DLSS are technologies that “render at low resolution → enlarge with AI”.

Use CaseRecommendationReason
Games (Real-time)ONEssential to earn frame rate.
Still Images (Architectural Rendering)OFFDetails become blurry, lines look pixelated.

Recommended Settings

Upscaler Algorithm: None
Screen Percentage: 100 (Required)

If None is not an option, FSR + Screen Percentage 100 won’t have major negative effects, but turn OFF if possible.

Summary: When in Doubt, Use This

Standard PC (VRAM 6-8GB)

Pathtracer / 4K / Denoiser ON / Samples 512 / Upscaler None

→ Sufficiently beautiful images complete in 3-8 minutes.

High-End PC (VRAM 12GB+)

Pathtracer / 4K / Denoiser OFF / Samples 2048 / Upscaler None

→ Takes 10-30 minutes, but achieves professional-grade textures.

Related Pages

OverviewInterior & Night Scenes