Brazil: Why does it look like this?

[CapnPanic]

ok i'll have to go through this one thing at a time.

1) usually the splochiness you are seeing is the result of the view rate being too low. yours is set to 25, which is usually enough, but since you have a perfectly flat material which shows the slightest variation in lighting, you will need to go higher.

2) i see you have your QMC GI bounces set to 10 and photons turned on. First off, if you have photons turned on setting the QMC bounce to 1 and have indirect illumination turned on, you will get only photons. If you set it to 2 bounces, it will activate regathering and use both the photon solution and QMC gi. Anything higher then 2 bounces is ignored when photons are on.

3) Next, your photon settings are fairly far off here. Unless your scene is very small, the max search radius is much too small. For a regathered solution, a good rule of thumb is to make the search radius very large (like the width of your scene) and work down from there. The splitting check box should be deactivated, as this is for caustics and splits the photon into multiple photons on reflective and refractive surfaces. Your number of photons in the estimate can be much lower, since you are regathering, you don't need as accurate a photon solution. The Light settings seem to be okay, but that is also dependant on where the light actually is in the scene.

There is a photon GI tutorial on the splutterfish downloads page here:

http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/sf_gen_page.php3?page=plugins

(called 'photons explained')

4) As for your softer shadows, just change your light to an area light or change the shadow type to brazil ray shadows and select the type of soft shadows you would like from the list. :)

[wirefixed]

Thank you Capn_Panic, you have just been elevated to a God in my world.
Those suggestions worked like a charm, and I must say they taught me a valueable thing.

Before today I just boosted, like, bounces and all other stuff, thinking "more, means better",
but it doesn't. Thank you for that lesson... :thumbsup:

Lighting is one of the more tough skills for me, other than texturing, which I have completely given up on.

[CapnPanic]

glad to be of assistance :)

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