having a big problem using the granite texture in an animation.  the still image looks great but the dots seem to jump around and chatter very much when i animate the camera.  using a 3d granite texture node with a 3d placement.  the object itself is not moving only the camera so how can i filter the noise better so its more consistent frame to frame?

This is the most common problem for bump maps.
It happens the most any high frequency noise maps when they get far enough from the camera.
What you need to adjust is the Bump Filter or the Bump Filter Offset cleverly hidden under the Effects tab of the Bump Node.
Search Maya help for “2d Bump"(Even if you are using 3d Bump) to get the technical breakdown on what these do.
The good thing about filtering is it eliminates the noise...but the bad thing is that it can soften the bump too much.
So, a more advanced way to use bump filtering is to control it with a Ramp texture projection attached to your camera.
Create a Planar Projection Ramp Texture and scale the projection so that on edge is at the front of the camera and the far edge extends just past the objects you want to effect.
Then select the projection and then select your camera and hit ‘p’.
This will parent the projection to the camera.
(if you are using the default Persp camera your projection will disappear because the default cameras are hidden by default. Just go to DISPLAY - Show - All and you will see your projection.)
Now make your ramp a simple Black on top and White on bottom U Ramp.
Now connect the outAlpha from the Projection node into the Bump Filter of the bump node.
Now turn on the IPR and adjust the ramp values and positions to apply more filter to the areas farther away from the camera. This way you will have the nice detail of you bump up close and eliminate the cattering of the bump in the problem areas.
Hopefully this does the trick!
~Ben

well that was a pretty creative reply.  however my problem is not with a BUMP node, nor does it have to do with distance from the camera per say.  but the problem is with the granite texture itself.  I have a very low cell size because the texture needs to look very fine spots.  im only using it for the COLOR channel in my shader.  Yes I would like to somehow filter the granite texture itself, HOWEVER i see no attribute or built in method to do so.  even with a static camera we can see a huge problem with the granite texture producing moire effect in some instances.  its very troubling and seems without solution?  I normally find that the MIPMAP FILTER function and to turn on ELIPTICAL FILTERING in the mental ray section for FILE nodes works wonders for chatter and removing moire. HOWEVER the granite node doesn’t have these attributes. WHY DONT I HAVE THIS FOR MY GRANITE?? kind of stuck at the moment.  It should also be repeated that I’m using the 3D granite with a 3D placement node.

any clues as to what i can do?

I just had this happen with a noise texture that I was using for a project at work.

What is happening is that there is such fine detail at the texture depth you are working that when you render that part of the image there is not enough pixel data to render it precisely.
As each pixel can only be one color, you will get noise because each frame the renderer may choose any of the possible colors for that pixel for a given frame.

You would not have this problem if you rendered the image at a crazy high resolution that had enough pixel data to clearly represent the minute detail of you texture.
But that is far from practical...or necessary.

The two ways I used to get rid of this problem were;
- Increase the Anti - Aliasing Samples in whichever renderer you are using.
*If your renders are getting too long then just up the Shading Samples Override on the surfaces that you are having a problem with. (found under the Shape node of the surface in question (RENDER STATS tab for Maya Software MENTAL RAY tab for Mental Ray))

- Adjust the texture to find the correct detail level. For really tiny detailed textures like this there is a sweet spot that has the detail you need while not being to detailed for your render. It is really easy to go past this point because, it will still look right to you...until you render an animation.

Sorry for my misunderstanding with the first post...it is a good trick to keep in mind for 2D or 3D bumps though!
Hopefully this is more in the right direction.
~Ben

There is a sweet

yes we have tried to increase the samples like you say good to know those tips however its still just crazy noisy.  I could go into the granite and figure out how to calm it down a bit by removing the tiny dots.  even at a sample of 3 and rendering to an HD frame its still chattery!

what im going to try is to give my model UV’s and try to bake the granite to a file texture. so that I can use the MR eliptical filter.  ouch. oh well. many parts to uv and not gonna be easy.

While laying out the UVs and baking the texture will work...It will take a good chunk of time.

I think you will be able to get some success faster if you try a mix of increasing the Cell Size, Decreasing the Density on the Granite texture and the scale of the place3DTexture node...again shooting for that sweet spot I mentioned in my previous post.

Whichever way you go, I have my fingers crossed that it works.
~Ben