Light Circles In Render

[Shawn Turner]

I sent a link to your email from Dropbox, not sure.

Here is the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4irbbl6izpr14h3/IXA715G_Bite_Back.c4d?dl=0

[Brian Jones]

it’s something to do with the Real Light setting of the lights – if you remove them altogether the dots go away, if you turn off “Real Light” and go with the “GI Light” (and turn on GI) the dots go away…. it’s not the Shadow settings – turn off the shadows and still dots.
Take away only one of the lights and you get only some of the dots so they both do it. The dots are there in Standard and Physical renderers…
I would toss the lights and use some other method to light the scene (or change to GI (if you can afford the render time) where they seem to do ok).
hmmm…. I was able to get similar dots by using GSG Light Kit softboxes – I was able to remove them by cranking up the lights Samples setting (you can tweak light setting directly in GSG as the lights are not hidden) to a lot higher than the default 40. Something similar is probably happening with your lights – I’m guessing it’s a rectangular Area light which is parallel to your flat surface so the individual samples are visible at the right angle and they have to be increased in number to blend together (or don’t use a rectangular Area light which is parallel to your flat surface)

[Shawn Turner]

Brian,

Wow. Thanks for the information. I will be working through this first thing in the morning when I return to the office. I will be sure to try what you have mentioned about a different light source – see how that works first.

I really appreciate your help on this. I will report back after with how it all works out!

Thanks again!!

[Alex Booth]

Also taking off any “Specular Strength” in your materials will make the circles go away! I’ve been on this hunt for ever as well and this really did the trick without adding a difference in render time.