Hey everyone,
this is my latest project: A simple still life scene with the goal to look realistic.
I rendered it with 2000 samples, still it’s really noisy - I guess this one will take a long time for the final render.
Critique is very welcome.
Looking pretty good! If it is noisy at that many samples, you should do some major optimization. What have you done so far? Multiple importance, clamping, good lighting?
Thanks 
It’s a pretty standard lighting, environment, sun and a plane with emission for some highlights. All with multiple importance.
I didn’t use any clamp because the image looks really dark and loses some nice lighting effects.
If this was rendered in pounds it would literally be a ton of samples ;)… haha.ha… anyway I like the scene in general. The lighting seems unusual for me for some reason. The liquid looks awesome though, it could be real bourbon.
Clamping some indirect light should do something for the render and I don’t think it’ll take too much away from it. If it darkens you could try turning up the exposure.
Great noise, mate. Great noise.
Really like your set up scene !
Also it’s hard to figur out what to do, I would suggest if not done yet,
to try:
- uncheck reflective & refractive Caustics in your light path / give it some filter glossy and may be adjusting the glass material with a light path node.
Hoping that could help.
Sheers…
Thanks for the kind words and for the tips, I’ll definately try them!
The lighting seems unusual for me for some reason
PeteMc, can you specify? I’m very new to lighting so I really want to improve 
You can btw critisize everything of the render, it’s not limited to the noise 
Sorry for the vagueness of the comment it was 2am when I wrote it. I can’t quite pinpoint it, but I almost feel like my eyes are straining while looking at the image. Maybe it should have a higher intensity on the light or be more directional.
Also another solution to your speckle problem might be DOF or anti-aliasing. If you turn up your blades in DOF it might solve this problem (radius and ratio might also have the same affect.)
Clamping direct at 3.00 and indirect at 2.00 is a good way of reducing noise without darkening the image.
Also, because you’re working with a lot of glass and liquid shaders in this scene i would not recommend turning off caustics, as it will hinder the realism of the render.
Also, The size of lighting can effect the noise, e.g - A 1cm Area lamp will usually produce more noise than a 30cm Area lamp