How to make speckles on materials go away -- Using mr Daylight system

[TonyInSeattle]

I’m having a problem with speckles showing up in my renderings. I’m using the mr Daylight system, and I’m very new to it. But I’ve searched far and wide for a solution and can’t seem to find any.

 

Attached is a rendering to show you what I’m talking about, as well as the 3ds Max file I used to render this.

 

What I’m trying to accomplish is a rendering of a wood bed in a room. I have an mr Daylight system outside illuminating the room through “windows” (no glass). I also have two sky portals in windows on the opposite end of the room to further illuminate it (a trick I’ve seen in the Max Help as well as online).

 

The bed (represented in the rendering as a large brown block) is covered with speckles. From what I can tell, this galaxy of speckles is a reflection of the Sky Portal(s) on the opposite side of the floor, the mr Sky or mr Sun, or the reflection of any of the above off of the floor.

 

I’ve tried raising my Antialiasing settings, the final gather precision, the glossiness reflection map settings on my materials, etc. – but to no avail. The speckles diminish, but the render times shoot WAY up – all for a not-so-pretty result!

 

Any ideas how to make the speckles go away so I can get a nice, smooth reflection?

 

Thank you for your help! I’m desperate and I have a big deadline on Monday!

 

Tony

[Justin Hunt]

increase the glossie reflection samples

[TonyInSeattle]

Justin, thanks for the reply. I did try that and it didn't help. I even tried ridiculously high levels. I got increased rendering times but very little improvement.

 

Any other ideas?

[jucaro]

post a screencap of the render settings and lets see...

[CJI]

I tried to open your file to take a look but couldn't open it. You using 2010? Anyway it looks like the the glossy reflection samples are too low, but like you said you've tried that so its probably a combination between that and the samples of your Mr Portal light. Have you tried upping them a bit as well? That worked for me on one of my renders.

Edited December 11, 2009 by CJI
typo

[TonyInSeattle]

Thanks, everyone for your replies. I did not get a chance to put screenshots up today but I will try over the weekend.

 

Regarding the glossy reflections, I tried very high numbers (over 100). Do you think I need to go higher? The renders took too long and there wasn't much improvement.

 

Uddie... Yes I'm using 2010. What samples on my portals are you referring to?The shadows?

 

I've been poking around the web and it appears the daylight system requires a lot of sampling and smoothing to get good results. I thought it was supposed to be a time saver! At any rate, I'll post more info tomorrow. But if anyone has any other suggestions, I could use them.

[Bruce Hart]

Hi,

Had a quick look at your scene. Turning on reflection fast interpolate on that material smoothed it right out.

 

Hope this helps

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi

 

for this problem i have wrote the Shader Utilities Pro. This use the Sample Curve Technology. That find and eleminate the Sample Errors. This is a "must have Application" for production, look here:

 

All Materials have real reflection, no pseudo Specular Highlights!

 

http://www.infinity-vision.de/ShaderUtilities/de/testrendering_sessel.htm

 

mfg

not chip

Edited December 12, 2009 by thorsten hartmann

[CJI]

hope your closer. oh and yes i meant the shadow samples, sorry about that.

[TonyInSeattle]

Hey, everyone... Thanks for the comments. I've been working on this all weekend and I think I have a solution. However, it's not all that I'd hoped for.

 

I tried Fast Interpolate, and it worked well, but only for objects that were relatively flat-sided. Unfortunately, my bed has a lot of curve and moldings. It did not look good.

 

Instead, I removed the sky portals that were showing up in my reflections (on the opposite side of the room, behind the camera) and replaced them with area photometric lights. I was able to control their intensity, and they didn't overwhelm the scene so much that I got speckles in my reflections. The results look really nice.

 

So, I guess the solution is to use fast interpolate if you have relatively flat-sided objects. If not, avoid reflections on your glossy materials from the sky portals, and instead use photometric area lights.

 

Thanks!

 

Tony