I don't know why MR is crawling like that, I don't know how the scene is setup. As for area lights their scale affects their intensity and shadow softness. If you're using MR then you can use the light shape option in the light shape's 'mental ray' section.
Well MR is crawling in the following situation: If I add grass (fur) to the plane, MS will render it fast, but MR will crawl due to it.
If there is no grass, MR works faster/better in rendering reflection of texture and shadows (only that the shadows need more adjusting for MR than MS). MS will be slower (though sometimes faster, no idea why) and will mess the textures (as seen in the tree in front of mirror pic and the cube in front of mirror pic)
Scene setup for tree pic:
Cube with blinn, reflective 1.000. Gray colored.
Tree is a paint effect turned mesh, with the tree base being a blinn with no reflectivity and mountain texture.
Light: Area light. Where shadow is not reflected it has Regular Shadow map format with no "Use MR shadow map overrides".
Where shadow IS reflected but its black and hard, the "Use MR shadow map overrides" is checked.
The ground is just another cube with the Mountain texture applied to it over a lambert.
Scene setup for cubes pic:
Small cube: Lambert with a hedgehog bmp texture.
Ground cube: Lambert with a bmp texture.
Gray cube: Blinn with reflectivity 1.000.
Light: Spotlight with shadows on. All I had to do to make the shadow softer was to make the shadow color gray. It instantly is reflected in the mirror whether I use MR or MS.
Last edited by SilverFeather; 29-11-2011 at 11:46 AM.