Long render times for interior architectural renders

[fraggle]

Also, weirdly enough there seems to be a direct link between the expense of the real life materials specified and the expense of the render!

Totally agreed on this regarding Archviz

[windowlicker]

This is the type of thing that I too would have done in the past. However, it has become apparent, through several users explanations, that upping the max DMC sampler from 4 to 8 like this can actually increase the overall noise as all values are divided by 8 (squared) rather than 4 (squared). This is the bit that is always counterintuitive (to me at any rate).

Yeah, I've read and heard about this stuff too. So far, I haven't noticed any real difference in actual rendering situations, when it comes to noise.

Anyway, my point is that I find it more useful to develop a personal workflow that eliminates tinkering and doing huge numbers of test renders, just to optimize a scene. We're ususally working on real short deadlines, and spending even an afternoon optimizing is unthinkable.
Also, there are other things than eliminating noise that produce great architectural renderings. Still never had a single client commenting on noise in an image. Lighting, materials, composition, mood... that and more comes ahead of the noise issues.

Would be nice though having a checkbox that would optimize material subdivs according to noise threshold and DMC max sample settings... just to increase render speed.

[svetlozar.draganov]

However, it has become apparent, through several users explanations, that upping the max DMC sampler from 4 to 8 like this can actually increase the overall noise as all values are divided by 8 (squared) rather than 4 (squared). This is the bit that is always counterintuitive (to me at any rate).

An option to disable division of DMC Sampler by Image Sampler has been provided in Vray 3.0, it called Divide shading subdivs:
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/pages/vie...MinShadingRate