Dome reflection pixelated

[maxedesa]

I'm getting this error, only sometimes, which seems to be a throwback to 2011. The dome light is reflecting as pixelated squares.

If I change light evaluation to full, it goes away. See screenshot of isolated channel. Any ideas?

[maxedesa]

I should mention, this is in the Specular channel:

[psanitra]

Turn OFF the "adaptive dome light(WIP feature)" that should fix it..
wonder why this i not fixed yet, many users reported it, inluded myself 2x already, it`s a known issue for around a year now.. , would be great to get it fixed and remove the WIP status...

[glorybound]

Yep and not to hound on Chaos, but it was a big NEXT feature that never really worked.

[maxedesa]

That's what I was thinking - strange that it doesn't work when it was one of the much-hyped features. And turning the option off affects the lighting, negatively.

[glorybound]

I am sure that they have been working hard on it. Hopefully, in May we’ll see it fixed in the next update.

[^Lele^]

It works perfectly fine if the shading properties of materials are left as physically accurate as they can be.
Funky setups on glasses are bound to make the tech stumble, as they invalidate (some of) the assumptions it makes to get speed.
Turn it off and use Portals if you prefer the speed from that approach, and funky transparency setups, rather than that of the Adaptive Dome and physically correct glasses.

[kosso_olli]

I remember Vlado said that most of these issues were fixed (ie not casting shadows and visible to reflecions off)

[maxedesa]

Can you be more specific about funky glasses?

[kosso_olli]

Can you be more specific about funky glasses?

Setting windows etc. to cast shadows off or making them invisible to reflecion. These were valid workflows in the early days, like many many years ago. Now this not a good advice anymore, just leave everything as is. A photographer also doesn't have a chance to remove the windows, so think like a photographer...

It would be good if V-Ray printed a warning if any of these non-physical things are found in the scene when using Adaptive Dome Light.

[maxedesa]

Right. Not using these approaches. Any other ideas what causes the problem?

[maxedesa]

The more I think about this, the more ludicrous this seems --

Top billed feature for V-Ray Next: Adaptive Dome Light
Find out more on the info page... Where there is no caveat to usage, no mention of the requirements.
So it works, sometimes, if you follow the unpublished guidelines.

[^Lele^]

Right. Not using these approaches. Any other ideas what causes the problem?

You could send support a scene, and they'd figure it out for you.

[maxedesa]

Thanks! I'm doing that now. Will post an update with the answer.

[hermit.crab]

I investigated your scene and it seems the artifacts are present when the Adaptive dome light has it's 'Affect Reflections' option turned off. I have forwarded the issue to our developers for further investigation.