ok, using the plane for ground is actually not that bad, I thought you had it placed vertically. Although still, painting the bottom of the HDRI in photoshop would be faster ;)
I should have written that I used it as a ground plane :) Will try painting the bottom of the HDRI and see if that makes any difference. However the noise was still there with CoronaColor as a light source.
Any chance you can upload the scene or a similar one with this problem? Maybe this will be a faster solution. :)
I´ve never uploaded a scene. But I can remove some commercial textures and upload the scene. Where should I do that?
oeps, I missed the bump message in your first post.
Just to rule out the materials as the problem, you could render it with eveything as a white material.
Although CG source has excellent HDRI's, try using another HDRI.
Another thing you could try is optimizing your # of passes by switching to bucket mode and render only a problematic spot with region render.
Make sure you put the amount of passes on 1 and play with the "Samples per iter". Whenever you are statisfied (read less noise) use this amount in progressive mode as your amount of samples.
With this workflow you can change the values of GI/AA and Light samples Multiplier aswell to see some quick results.
Since I tried with CoronaColor and still got the persisten noise I don´t think it´s the HDRI´s fault.
I will try render using only a white material and also try with bucket mode.
Hi. Regarding HDRI. Some of the best I've found so far is from HDRI-Sets. Link: http://www.hdr-sets.com/index.php/free-sets.html
They have some free sets to try out, complete with back plates. I especially like the two outdoor sets. They give nice sharp shadows and lit the scene without the typical "to bluish" color tone.
Try it out.
I´ve never had any problem with the HDRI´s from Cg-source. I think the quality is good but I will check those out!
