The most common suggestion I see is to use post-processing options under the output tab to turn up dither. However, only the render view layer is without banding. No matter what, the image or animation saved has color banding. Is there any proper way to handle this? How to save the post-processed version that’s on the render view layer? Adjusting the dither, I’m able to see banding go in real-time, but when saving it, it’s saving the one with banding.
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Not sure what you mean by ‘Dither’ and ‘Post-processing’
- Which version of Blender are you using? I see ‘Dither’ and ‘Post-processing’ in older versions.
- With ‘Post-processing’ do you mean the workspace tab “Composition”?
General Q&A note
Help us all to help you.
Please give full screenshots with any questions. With the relevant panels open.
This can be done by Blender itself, via the ‘Window’ menu bar top left-hand side.
On that menu dropdown is ‘save screenshot’.
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I’m on Blender 3.4. Note that I am not using the compositing tab at all. This setting is in the output tab.
I have an emission shader on the character, creating a color banding issue on gradients. I have been researching on the best way to handle it on my own, as it’s not a GDTV-specific thing. However, after several hours of research and experimentation, I found that:
- Don’t use Eevee + emission + bloom… 🥲
- Crank up Dither on the Post-Processing section.
The only problem with #2 is that it updates the render preview and only seems to apply the Dither settings on the BMP file but it doesn’t work for videos or PNGs.
Following is BMP:
(GDTV doesn’t allow me to upload BMP… 
)
The PNG that has banding even though Dither setting is maxed out:
There is this color banding around the character. It’s a lot more bearable as a still image, but with the walk animation, it’s a nightmare.
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In that case, it has to do with the video settings.
Video by default does a lot on video compression.
Whereby your dithering (noise) is eliminated.
Use ''FFmpeg video", then encoding tab > video part.
Choose high quality or even loss less.
But due to animation, I don’t think you see much dithering. because a pixel (dither) is only visible on 1/24 of a second. And if you switch off randomization, then it will be ugly to see.
You need to study how video compression works!
Not part of this course.
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I’ve exported video as lossless and still suffers banding issue, unfortunately.
Yes, I do realize exporting quality video is not part of the course. Hence I did my own research extensively. I was just taking advantage of the community aspect of this and only posted here hoping maybe some other student who have found a workable solution for videos would help too.
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I do not know what loss less does!
But there is also the trick od adding more keyframes to the movie.
But I don’t think that Blender can do that.
You could try to go for rendering to .png files and use a pro video tool to merge the sequence.
Another question. What is your render resolution and how do you view this video clip?
Because viewing the movie on a different scale will also diminish your dithering.
What you are trying to do, is to keep a single pixel (that’s what dithering does) in a single frame within a sequence of frames.
You need to understand how this banding is created. And probably has nothing to do with compression and dithering.
If you use Cycles, and de denoiser is switched on. This will also blur pixels, possibly creating bands. Then you need to switch off the denoiser and add more render cycles. Maybe 1000 or more.
Do you use a glow effect in Cycles?
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Might it be your monitor?
I only say that as I just do not see any banding. The image is small not full hd let alone 4k. But it looks smooth on my monitor.
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I can see banding while looking at it straight but I can’t at an angle. So, it’s possible some monitors might not pick it up or have a feature of dithering built-in to the monitor. It’s visible on my phone too, but it’s a lot less. However, overall the banding is more bearable in the PNG, but annoyingly visible in mp4 export. It’s more bearable in GIFs made from the PNGs.
See GIF: Tvie~ Walk Cycle Animation
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