thanks, will have a read later
This is what I came up with Stan.
As you can see the main speed gain is from the reinhard burn and light cache settings, but then to go from 3 hrs to 33 mins with the new settings is pretty impressive too.
So the actual settings I used were:
DMC Image Sampler
min 2, max 32
clr threshold 0.01
Settings: DMC
Adaptive amount 0.85
Noise threshold 0.005
Lights
generally 80 (use VMC script)
vraydomelight 240
GI
240 subdivs
Materials
generally 80 subdivs (use VMC script to set)
the back grey wall 320
ceiling and right wall 240
other difficult mats (table and chairs) 240
and then the frosted pendant was slowing things down so I set the reflection subdivs to 240, refraction to 320 and the refraction max depth to 2. Obviously this changes the look of it so maybe putting it to 3 would have been better
Nice!
Would it be to much to ask if you could send me the max file alone back in 2012?
I would like to try this out, I’m very impressed!
Cheers
Stan
I couldn’t figure the right amount of glossy refraction but it seams you have nail it. Just wondering, if there is no glossy reflections, what is the number of reflection subdivisions doing in this case?
Thanks
I must have assumed there were reflections! so to answer your question, nothing 
pm sent with a link
I’m still puzzled with the HRDI value… Using a vray camara with Vray sun with the same angle as your HRDI map with defaults 1/1 they produce almost the same amount of light. To be seen in the slot material I was able to figure that multiplying and dividing by the same amount it produces the same final result. But in this case the value used is 25 times stronger than 1, so also 25 stronger than Vray Sun, wich seams a bit odd. I remember that Vray didn’t like overbright values much, resulting in a major increase of render time. I would assume that this value is not very reflection/refraction friendly because all the light information that HRDI is able reproduce. Wouldn’t be better to increase the camara exposure instead, using a more sensitive film for instance?
There are a few of these threads now and they have all been an interesting read. Although they all seem to arrive at different ideal settings 
I wonder how much of this will change in V-Ray 3.0, if Brute Force is going to be much faster?
My thoughts are : do we still have to put those settings in.
I mean, I guess, but the whole purpose of progressive is that it’s being constantly calculated better and better.
So starting from this, a material after 20 seconds will “look” like it’ been render with 8 subdiv, after 5hours, it should “look” like it’s been render with 500 subdivs.
I put “look” between brackets because I’m not sure if any subdiv have any real weight here… in progressive anyway… Like RT, no settings, it just calculate and goes…
For the normal type of render, it has been said that BF is quicker, yes, but that doesn’t change the base principle of optimizing knowing how the software is working, in this case : DMC subdiv.
Just a side question, does anyone know how AA will be applied to a progressive render? Can we imagine to have a “Cutmull-rom” sharp edge on a progressive render, it means it’s refining the AA constantly? doesn’t that take more processing power then creating the AA after the whole bucket has been render like usual, I mean, after traditional way of light, GI, etc and AA applied at the end, if it’s like that that it’s working?
Thanks
Stan
hi peter!
you always talk about your or the univeral settings in comparison. could you elaborate one more time what that means (to you)? as i can´t find out what settings those are i don´t know what you are comparing here, are you talking about irradiance map plus lightcache with 1 and 100 min/max dmc settings or something completely different?
cheers,
christoph.
thanks stan!
yeah, we know them and use a variation of those in our work too. but i was curious about peters settings, if they were exactly like the above mentioned or some tuned to personal use variation like ours is…
Hey guys,
what are you thoughts about fine geometry animations?
I mean, I’m trying to render a aerial forest here, and it seems that those settings are not really applying here, the trees are flicking quite heavily and I need to go really low on the noise (ie : 0.005) to get the flick free render, but then the render time is going through the roof.
Is there any reverse way of doing : fine edge AA high but keep it low on the lights/mats/gi etc?
I’m just guessing that the settings for animations are not the same optimization as settings for stills…
Thanks
Stan
no just the original ones Vlado posted way back (adaptive at 1.0)
One relevant thing to that is Vlado has pulled back from using 1.0 as the adaptive amount as low amounts of initial rays weren’t giving vray enough information to make good decisions and so it could prevent clean sampling - try 0.9 instead.
I’m on an interior project at the moment where I went for this approach. I can’t show any visuals unfortunately.
So in my tests I rendered at 720p. I started of with IRmap, but then thought I would push it and started over with BF.
My AA is 1, 6
To clean rawlight I had to set the Lights subs between 64 and 128 for various lights. Lights are NOT set to store with ir and also NOT set as skylight portal. Most of them are set to invisible and to NOT affect reflections.
To clean the GI I went with 196 BF subs
With the grey override, everything looked super clean and at 720 it rendered about 1 and half hours. Perfect sample rates and RAW passes etc.
OK Perfect.
I previously set the material samples for glossy things between 64 and 128 to clean it up with IRmap, but when switching to BF I just left it like that.
OK so instead of testing how the sample rate would look now that I switched OFF override, I thought I would just render. While I’m at it I thought ok settings seem pretty good, let me while I’m at it push the resolution up to 4K.
OK so previously with the override at 720 a perfect render took 1,5 hours.
NOW:
Without the override and at 4K everything looks super clean and looks AWESOME!. Just my RAWReflection has some noise in it, but I have to nicely look to see it.
Yes! everything is perfect?
Almost, the part that rendered looks great.
MAJOR PROBLEM!?! After 15 hours rendering it did only about 5% and the estimate said still another 300 Hours to Go!
:(:(
Aaarrggg!
Any thoughts? I Would love to get this to work with BF.
Suggestions, comments, and general sympathy welcome
Ha!
What might be happening is now that you’ve introduced your materials, they’re making your lights contribute less to the overall sampling - if you had a flat grey object then it’s nothing but lights / shadow samples controlling it’s cleanliness. When you put the materials back on, you could be now getting 50% of the final result from light samples but the other 50% from material samples. I’d drop down to 720p again and pick a region of the image that represents your materials and then tweak your material samples. What type of scene is it? Interior / exterior and what’s it lit by?
It’s an interior mall near the entrance looking out. The entrance has 8m high glass and about 15m wide. In my view this entrance sits on the right and makes up about 10% of the image. The main focus however is inside and looking at a counter and stuff hanging from the ceiling. The outside is lit by a VRaySun with deafault settings. Also, I’ve got a domelight with VRaySky in it and samples at 128.
Inside the place is lit by large “fake” vray lights to light it up a bit. These lights are about 4meter X 3meter. Here and there there are some VRayIES lights near the walls. Shopfronts ar full height glass and you see into the shops also (no fake shopfronts)
However inside the shops I’ve positioned large banners with mannequins in front so you dont see much in the shops. Marble floor. Shiny columns between shops. Main mall light is cove lighting made with VRayLightMtl applied to it. So it comes out a bit dark and therefore the large fake vraylights. Exposure is such so that the outside just just starts to blow out slightly, and interior is nicely lit. The sun shines away from the entrance, not into it.
Most Lights are between 64 and 128 samples. Have one large vray light shining down from ceiling (fake light) Have 1 large vray light the size of the shopfronts inside each shop shining towards mall, double sided tick, about 8 of these.
EDIT: Also, in theory then John, could I cut most of my light samples in half then?
You’ve a nasty situation full stop here, I’d be inclined to go back to irmap and light cache. Use light cache to accelerate glossies, and turn off the filter on it too - it’ll speed up glossies a lot (thanks Lele!).
The light samples you’ve gotta judge in conjunction with your reflection samples, as noisy lights can lead to noisy reflections. If your sample rate has gone way more red when introducing your materials back in, it might mean your material samples need to go up.
Should I switch off the filter and also the pre-filter?
The thing is that I might need an animation of this area with moving objects, that’s why I’m giving BF a go, but obviously might have to go IRmap like you say and just live with that and attempt BF on next scene…