TheKitchenAbode

You should be able to boost the ambient light level under 3D View Defaults if you have "Use Camera View Settings" checked in the Raytrace DBX, increase the "Uniform Intensity" in the Raytrace DBX and you can also boost things with the "Image Properties Settings". If things are still too dark then you could add a few 3D lights. Here's one I just Raytraced. Direct Sunlight Intensity "0", all lights turned off. Boosted Intensity & contrast in Image properties. 60 passes in 2 minutes. Graham

An alternative is to set the Direct Sunlight intensity to "0" in the Raytrace DBX. You can also set this to a very low setting if you desire some shadow effect without it being to over powering. Graham

David - The Ambient Occlusion functions a bit like a shadow/highlight adjuster and should help in creating a crisper look. You may also find that when using this the ceiling will also brighten up. This may allow you to reduce the emissivity of your ceiling material which will also help in making things a bit more crisp. The Caustics really only effects how light refracts when passing through a transparent object such as the island pendants, the effect in your plan would be minimal so turning this off is not likely going to be detrimental. One thing I noticed is that there appears to be a pinkish cast showing up on the sink and stove front, suspect this is coming from the polished floor, you may need to adjust the floors polished material settings or try some of the other metals to see if this effect can be eliminated. Graham

You need to have "Photon Mapping" turned "ON" to get those predefined metals to show properly. Also, under "Image Properties" the brightness was set to high and the contrast and intensity needed to be adjusted. Here is my Raytrace after making these changes, did not have all of your textures so some items are off. Graham

Correct Larry - The current and future direction being taken by Intel and others is more towards energy efficiency to take advantage of the laptop/mobile needs. For desktop systems their approach to significantly improve performance is to increase the number of cores/threads and how this is managed. Clocking is pretty well tapped out so I would not expect any significant change from current levels. If you want to speed things up then buy as many physical cores as you can afford and make sure they support hyperthreading. Graham

Here is a link to a recent cpu comparison that includes the I7 6950. http://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-7700k-and-z270-chipset-review?page=1 Note that the performance gain is highly dependent upon on the type of processing task, it is not always significantly faster across the board. Graham

For large models in Chief the approach being taken by Robert is likely the most effective way to deal with speed related issues. I doubt that a hardware approach alone would overcome the performance issue to make things satisfactory. For example, if you have a 10 second lag and you double your system speed then the lag will now be 5 seconds, which will still be very frustrating. Also, if your system is fairly recent then it would be very challenging and expensive to double it's speed. Not saying this won't help but I would set my expectations accordingly to avoid disappointment. Graham

Thanks Scott - Just tried that and my upper cabinet just passes through the base cabinet when moving vertically as if the bump/push is turned off, which it is not as it works on horizontal moves. Graham

I can't get my cabinets to bump/push with each other when moving them vertically. Works fine for all horizontal movements but when moving vertically they will only bump/push when contacting a wall or ceiling plane, not with each other. Is this normal behavior? Running X8. Thanks, Graham

The DPI setting just determines the print size in inches based upon the pixel width & height. Running 500 passes is not likely going to yield a significantly better Raytrace, I find that after about 30 passes the difference between it and say 100 passes is not often detectable. The last time I sent something out to a printer they wanted 600DPI resolution. Based on your 30" X 24" print size you need to change your width to 18,000 and the height to 14,400 and the DPI to 600. This could take a very long time to Raytrace, double the pixels quadruples the time. Graham

For each of those spot lights turn Cast Shadows to "OFF". Graham

Too early in the morning so I didn't drink this one. Ran this on my laptop so it's at a lower pixel size 600 X 600. No real problem with speckles, needs a bit of work, whiskey is not aged enough. Graham

Sorry about that, it looked so real I downed it before the Raytrace was finished . Will pour another shot and give it a run. I do know that this will create more potential for speckles as it will add another layer of semi-transparent material that the light will need to pass through. Graham

The glass is just a standard glass and glass material in CA and the ice cubes are a resized pillow with the Crystal Ice Glass material form the CA material library, nothing special. It's more likely to be your lighting and Raytrace settings that are the issue. What you are dealing with is what happens when light is passing through several layers of semi-transparent material. The more layers the greater the potential for speckles. How bad or good this will be depends upon the amount of light, the type of light and the Raytrace settings. Unfortunately there is no single magic setting, these often need to be adjusted accordingly for each scene. The key is to try to gain an understanding as to what these settings really do so you have a means to access an issue and resolve it through a logical approach. Graham

Here is the same scene with Photon Mapping & Caustics "OFF". 10 passes in 2 minutes. 1200px X 1200px. Here it is after only 3 passes in 40 seconds. No speckles. Graham

You should not have to run this all night. Here is one I just ran with 10 passes in 12 minutes. Photon mapping "ON", Caustics "ON", 1200px x 1200px. Scene uses only two spot lights. Graham

It is very difficult to predict how much this will clean up by running significantly more passes. How long did it take to run 36 passes? Try 100 passes and see if there is a noticeable improvement, this would provide some indication as to how long it might take to fully clear up. How you have lite this will also effect the degree of speckles in combination with the material settings. Raytracing through multiple layers of glass and transparent materials is a real challenge. Suggest posting the plan to see what others might come up with. Graham

Mike - The way your lights and materials are set you will need to run your break room with Photon Mapping turned on. Would suggest turning off those grid ceiling lights so you will be able to Raytrace in a reasonable length of time. If you want to run this with Photon Mapping off then you will need to change your lighting and most likely the stainless steel material/properties so they do not show as black. When Photon Mapping is turned on the Raytrace engine is calculating multiple light bounces and as such your stainless steel will show correctly due to light bouncing off of the walls, floors, ceilings and other objects in the room. When Photon Mapping is turned off then this light bouncing is not calculated, to get the stainless to show correctly you would need to add additional lights specifically directed at the stainless steel or you would need to change the stainless steel properties/material to compensate for this. Graham

Jon - Without seeing your exact plan it's difficult to know exactly what is happening. I did post renderings earlier on that showed the results I obtained, all of them had some form of light source. Also, point lights are more problematic than spot lights as their light paths are calculated differently. This issue can also be affected by the balance between a light sources intensity and the ambient light source intensity. It's very easy to have the lighting set where if you think of this in photographic terms the pic is way over or under exposed. Too much light in the room will overwhelm the Raytrace engine, it just can't adjust no matter the number of passes. Graham

When I looked at this it appears that the grid ceiling light fixtures are the issue. There is always a high risk of these speckles in the glass when the light source has to pass through a lights lens or transparent shade and then through more transparent materials such as glass in windows and doors. In this plan the light from it's source is passing through 3 transparent materials before getting to those back offices. If the lights are point type and photon mapping is on that's a huge number of calculations which is also compounded by the number of light sources. Theoretically, things should get cleaner as the number of passes increase however, this plan takes so long to run even a single pass I'm not sure one would have the patience to wait to see what this would look like after say 100 passes. Also, the calculated corrections per pass follow the law of diminishing returns, as each pass completes the apparent correction lessens. Graham

If you wish to have the lights as per the original plan then turn the Photon mapping off. Still runs like a pig but glass will be clean. These took about 3 min. for 2 passes. Photon Mapping Off - no speckles Photon Mapping On - speckles Graham

The problem in this plan relates to the light settings. I turned off all of the lights and added a few of my own. No problem with speckles, added a few pics on the wall in the offices so you can see. Runs a lot faster now, 50 passes in 2.5 minutes. Graham

I know, it's a real problem. Try turning off Photon mapping or eliminate the glass altogether. Make the window a pass through, not sure how you deal with the door. There was a discussion on this about 6 months ago, not sure anyone was able to come up with a real solution. Graham

Raytracing through multiple layers of glass is problematic and it can take a "lot" of passes to clean things up. Try making the glass in the elements behind the front glass screen 100% transparent or change the glass to a general material with a high transparency. Might help. Graham

Gene Davis - If you need to drop the light intensity further than the % intensity adjustment then you can supplement this by making the color of the light a % of black. That will give you 255 additional levels. It's a great way to fine tune things regardless of the % intensity level. You can also increase the drop rate. Graham