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Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 5:02 PM UTC
Needs More Info

I'm getting very harsh banding from lights on PC not getting same result on a Mac

Hey all, so I teach an AE class and i'm finding that when I use a light with a 3d object I'm getting tons of harsh banding. When I open the same file on a Mac banding is fairly minimal. Any idea why? PC is a big heafty workstation, lots of GPU mem, and processing etc. Mac pro's at school are a few years old. I've tried uping render quality, made color space 32 still no change. Also this is fairley recent, haven't run into this issue in the past. 

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11 replies

Adobe Employee
Oct 17, 2024 2:22 PM UTC

I'm repeating similar behavior on mac and win with this project.   I can't explain why you are not having a problem on mac at this point (which would imply that this is a different kind of problem on win),  but the consistent cross platform behavior I'm seeing is likely precision limitation that needs improvement.  I think the reason you are running into it with this particular project is a combination of the light levels at 100% are a bit low with the physically based shading in this engine and the structure of the 3D scene is causing deep shadowed areas.   Increasing the light levels to 300-400% range improves the banding but understood that may not have been the look you were going for.

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 15, 2024 6:27 PM UTC

I will check in class on Wednesday. I think the servers at school have auto updates but you never know. What I might do is open it up in the AE beta here and see if it makes a difference. Thanks for geting back to me. 

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Adobe Employee
Oct 15, 2024 6:16 PM UTC

Thanks.  I've got the test file and we'll take a look.  2040 should be quite sufficient.   Are the mac and windows AE versions different?  Which versions?

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 15, 2024 12:12 AM UTC

screen grab of what I'm seeing

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 11:19 PM UTC

GPU is older I was thinking that might be the issue as well. GPU is a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 TI. It's about 4years old. Never had an issue, runs UE, Houdini, Cinema4D really well. That said it's probably time for an upgrade. Link below to AE project folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/bfe3ksznktcwfrlr4sxcd/AMIJkb3XXiMWzlykSCXpWhg?rlkey=hvskhi8racsn42vw8s66ueaso&dl=0

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Adobe Employee
Oct 14, 2024 9:02 PM UTC

Hi TavC1, Can you provide a simple project that repeats this?  What is the windows GPU being used?

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 7:30 PM UTC

just point lights and the AE advanced render. 

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 5:20 PM UTC

I'm in my class on Wednesday I can screen grab what i'm seeig on the Mac. It's funny because the Mac pro's struggle with just about everything else but seem to tackle the lights better. 

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 5:17 PM UTC

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TavC1Author
Known Participant
Oct 14, 2024 5:09 PM UTC

Hey for sure importing natively. will send a screen grab. 

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