Grainy Renders
 

Hey all!

I'm a new maya user (loving it!) and today I was following this tutorial, http://pixeltutorials.wordpress.com/...th-mental-ray/

and I was able to follow it pretty closely, however my mental ray renders come out a bit grainy, like in the attached picture.

I was hoping to get some guidance on how to improve the quality and make it less grainy. Any tips?
I'm basically teaching myself from home and I'm having a blast, although this has slowed me down some. :help:

You need to increase your samples. I can't tell you which ones as I don't have a copy of Maya on this machine. Maybe Gen can help out. I'll bring this to her attention.

I'm assuming you're using an area light with the light shape activated. The high samples need boosting. The trick is to balance that with the render settings samples. On a side note, it does look like the normals on the gems could be hardened for a more chiseled look and the refraction traces in the render settings could be increased.

The caustics don't look focused enough either.

Ok got it that was most helpful. And yes gen, I am using the area light. SO I need to harden the edges (so obvious now!), increase my sampling and play with refraction settings and caustics. Thanks! I will re-post hopefully better results!

This is one of my first renders in maya so all of this is great help, thanks a ton!