Architectural Interior - slow render, fireflies, realism?

Hello,

This is my first ever blender job, and I’m looking for any feedback on this render. It’s straight from Blender - I haven’t adjusted anything in Photoshop yet. This will be used as a background for a live action green-screened person. The person’s lighting is fairly flat, hence me avoiding any interesting or dramatic shadows/lighting. On this render, I’ve added a little depth of field blur, which I might omit on the final render.

Three things that concern me:

  • More realism. Any suggestions to make this look “more real” would be welcome. I know that’s very vague!
  • Render time. On my Windows 7 4.7GHz i7 3960X machine rendering on a GTX580 card, it takes about 6 hours to render this one frame! I’ve searched for the usual ways to reduce render time (played with tile size, light bounces, samples, etc) but can’t seem to get much improvement without encountering noise/fireflies.
  • Firefliex/bright noisy pixels. I’ve tried tweaking the bounces, filter glossy, light sizes and multiple importance, but those pesky things remain. The only way round them is to increase the samples, which slows down the render times a lot.

So, any feedback/suggestions would be very welcome! (I’ve got to deliver this final job by the end of Monday…!)

Oh yes - and I’ve noticed that I need to smooth out that curved wall/ceiling section above the desk!

  • Paul


I would check if you have bump and spec maps on every material that has an image texture. That improves the realism a lot. I would also turn down the intensity of the lights, because right now, the image is a little blown out.

About the fireflies, if you haven’t checked out this article you definitely should:

Good luck!

Thanks for that, ShadowCamero. I’d already found that very useful blenderguru fireflies article, and eventually the setting that saved the day was the Clamp Indirect one. I did also reduce the light intensity, and the client was very happy with the result.

I’m happy to hear it!