difficult to clean-up bokeh

[^Lele^]

shaders were done from scratch, so no issue there. there were cheats ofc, it is solved the way i mentioned above, just it took some uncomfortable compromises.

Eh, fireflies, particularly in current V-Ray, tend to signify some *seriously* high energy, seriously small set of paths (one overbright sample would be drowned in the remaining ones. If it stays, it means V-Ray keeps finding energetic stuff coming from that set of directions, if it has to make an effort to find it in the first place.).
Even fairly high energies can be today distributed without issue (cfr. Reflective GI caustics.): to break that requires some whacking, hence me talking of a "conscious effort" to stay within real-life ranges (ie. reduce shaders and lights and color mapping cheating to as close to zero as possible).
SPM and clamping patch the issue through some severe biasing, which is why i tend to avoid those like the plague, but sure, they'll help by cutting off the higher energies...

[thanulee]

Paint out the tiny pixels from hdr. Replace them with something that's more traceable like vray lights etc etc.

This would mean though only gi from hdr and a vray sun as direct for example? In some level this will affect the quality of ur shadows right? Is there a technique to spot those very bright pixels in 32 bit? thanks

[^Lele^]

This would mean though only gi from hdr and a vray sun as direct for example? In some level this will affect the quality of ur shadows right? Is there a technique to spot those very bright pixels in 32 bit? thanks

CurveTool in nuke, set to min/max, will highlight the two pixels on the image.
Or simply expose down the image until everything is pitch black, but a few pixels...

[Morbid Angel]

This would mean though only gi from hdr and a vray sun as direct for example? In some level this will affect the quality of ur shadows right? Is there a technique to spot those very bright pixels in 32 bit? thanks

to be honest the precision and detail at pixel level of the hdr is really not that important. Unless its a night city or something. Unlike indirect reflection (from camera eye to object normal to environment) vray lights, and source like that trace backwards from light to object normal so its much easier much faster to resolve those.

[thanulee]

Thanks for the help guys