Cycles rendering sci-fi warp tunnel with weird lighting effect

I am trying to create a 360 degree stereoscopic VR film, and I am trying to create the Hyperwarp Tunnel effect. I used a cylinder rotated and scaled way out on the Y axis, surrounding my camera. Here is what the node setup looks like, as well as how it displays in rendered mode in the 3D view.



Looks great. That is exactly what I want. So I go to render a test image:


What the heck are those random boxes of light? Why are they there? It looks horrible even in VR. Help is greatly appreciated.

(SIDE NOTE: This is a low-res non-stereoscopic version of the render. I’m using it only because the site doesn’t like the full resolution 4k image. Also, I have tested and these light boxes also appear even when not rendering spherically.)

Here is the .blend file for anyone who needs it: Hyperwarp Tunnel.blend (507 KB)
I did some experimenting, and changing the color of the world background changes the color of the light boxes. Also, the background is set as Transparent under “Film” in Render Settings, so I don’t know why that affects anything. I would really appreciate if someone would respond soon. This project is way behind schedule, this issue obviously should not be happening, and it’s driving me up the wall!

Nobody? Is there really no explanation for this?

Adding a subsurf modifier to the cylinder seems to work.

Attachments


Hyperwarp Tunnel fix.blend (489 KB)

Worked perfectly! Thank you!