Problem with specular highlights / GGX

[Gerzi]

Hello,

I’m fairly new to VRay and I’m having a problem with some specular highlights in a render of a Helmet I’m working on.
The problem is that the edges around the specular highlights on the nose guard and also the breathing holes are really jagged and I can’t find a way to smooth them out.
I’ve played around with the Reflection/Subdivs, the light samples, the GI Subdivs and the image Sampler (Adaptive)
but nothing seems to have an impact on the specular Highlights.
What I found out is that switching the BRDF from GGX to Ward seem to fix at least the issue of the brass nose guard highlights but not the one from the holes.
And because I really like the look of the brass material much better with GGX I'd like to find a solution without switching to Ward. I've tried different GTR Tail falloff settings but that didn’t gave me a good result either.

Please have a look at the to attachement so see what I’m talking about. One is with GGX the other with Ward BRDF
Has anybody an idea how I can solve this problems?

thanks,
Roger

[vlado]

There are several things you can do:

*) Add a bit of bloom to the image to smooth the jagged edge;
*) Use a more blurry AA filter (f.e. quadratic or sharp quadratic, or cubic);
*) Turn on "subpixel mapping" and "clamp output" and set the clamp value to maybe 2-3;
*) Render to a larger resolution and then downscale;

Best regards,
Vlado

[Joelaff]

Try the "Soften" image sampler (Gaussian) with a radius around 3.5-4.4. This should clean it up nicely, producing a more photoreal result as well.