Large white dots - something to do with material?

[Dryn]

Hello!

 

I'm working on this gun and before I started doing any texture work on it I thought it would be a good idea to figure out roughly the kind of render and material settings I'd be using.

 

Unfortunately, once I found a material and setup I liked I noticed I had these annoying white circles appearing.

 

 

Im almost certain it's being caused by the material... because the white dots do not appear if I apply a standard max shader to everything.

 

On the Colt I've got an arch and design mat with the following:

 

Reflectivity 0.96, Glossiness 0.5, Gloss Samples 16, Metal Material Checked

 

IOR 40, BRDF by IOR

 

Ambient Occlusion selected

 

and then an HDRI map in the environment slot

 

I would really like to use this material - any idea on how to solve this? could it be caused by reflections somehow?

[mattclinch]

almost tempted to say you have caustic GI enabled..? how are you lighting it?

[Dryn]

I'm at work atm, so I can't check, but i'm 90% sure caustics is not enabled

 

im lighting it with a skylight with about 0.2 intensity

 

then an mr area spotlight with mental ray shadow maps at about 0.5 intensity

[DavidR]

I can hardly see them on my monitor -do you mean the whitish blotches on the ground arounf the gun? If so (although I'm a Vray user), I'd say you need to shoot more rays from your light or increase global samples.