Hi,
Cycles is great but (even though I don’t master it) I think there are still a lot of issues to solve. I can’t get the effect of an hanging lamp that projects its light to the floor without getting a bunch of “fireflies”!
I tried with a mesh and a point light and the result is basically the same (as you can see in the image below). So, how can I make a light hanging in this position with a spot projected to the floor and not getting all these “fireflies”?
Thank you for any help or tips.
LM
In the integrator panel, try increasing the Clamp value and activating No Caustics.
Increasing “clamp” or “no caustics” has no effect!
The best result I got so far is using an area light inside the dome. The problem is that if I need to see the spot light projected on the floor the emission must be at least 100, and that’s what is producing all these “fireflies”.
This is a reduced size test with a 100 passes and the more render passes the more artifacts are shown. This is kind of absurd… I think.
Of course 3D is more cheating than real life but there should be an easy and clean way to mount a scene like this - it’s just a lamp that projects light to the floor!
Still, any tips or advice on how to achieve these effect without the artifacts?!
Thanks.
LM
[UPDATE]
Well, as long as the lamp doesn’t affect the mesh (lamp dome) all the “fireflies” are gone!
I moved the area lamp enough to miss the mesh but add to increase the emission. Anyway, like this there is no way to narrow the spotlight and it will affect the walls too… not a solution yet.
[UPDATE 2]
I got a mid term solution that will have to work for me until further evolution of Cycles render method for these situations. It’s kind of weird but I though of using a light cone just like the ones used in real photography to narrow down the light and guess what?.. it worked! and no artifacts!
I started using a black velvet material for this new object but that would render a black object instead of a light bulb so I changed it to white emission and it still works without adding any “fireflies”. Light area is inside this one-side open cone which has a material emitter and both are inside the dome.
Comparing with the first posted image its almost perfect! Fly terminator was here 
Hope this helps others and if anybody has a better solution please let me know.
Thanks.
LM
A far simpler solution to your problem would be to combine Cycles with the BI renderer. Let Cycles produce the basic (“soft box”) exposure, drab and uninteresting. Then, use conventional rendering to generate light and shadow to composite into the final result.
I associate “fireflies” with any solution that is, shall we say, “going for subtlety.” My layman’s analysis is that the algorithm is convergent and it isn’t converging. Deliberately increasing the contrast of the scene (then desaturating it “in post”) seems to improve things. If a scene isn’t converging, fireflies-free, within a relatively short time, I find that it won’t do so any better within a long time.
