SandmanNinja

VERY NICE!

Glad you got the noise sorted - nice image.

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-SandmanNinja
website

renderhaus

Thanks, Sandman. Unfortunately this particular piece of brew equipment won't even be seen in the final render - that is unless I can convince the developer to pay me for a second shot from the opposite end of the pub. But this let me perfect the material for application to the other brew equipment closer to the foreground of the final shot.

shaneis

Then Spock-logic suggests the only possible cause is your area lights. Sorry to chime in late, but your problem is most probably because you were using spherical area lights. They "dilute" the samples around the whole scene but by replacing them with disc area lights and setting your high/low samples just right, you're aiming all that sampling info where you want it - on the subject. I often find with problematic area lights that a low sample value of half the high sample value will fix the problems (for eg, try highSamples=64, lowSamples=16/24/32 until your specular smoothes). Not sure about Max options, but in Maya the area light has theses sample channels, highSamples, highSampleLimit, lowSamples. If the highSampleLimit=1, then once the light has "hit" once, it will revert to the lowSamples value, so increasing the lowSample value will retain the quality. On a similar note, if you're using a procedural map for the A&D's reflectivity to generate the brushed effect, filtering the map can also help as the map is what's providing the info that governs how the area light will reflect back to the camera (ie specular info).

S.