[choo-chee]

no matter what I try, interiors with light hitting a shiny surface (like, sun hitting a glass table) make terrible caustics - tons of noise on ceiling. I tried disabling all the indirect flags, yet still I get it. what can be done other then render it for 100's of hours and hope for SL that is non-reachable ?

[luis.hijarrubia]

What engine are you using?

[choo-chee]

maxwell 3 (latest build, not beta or something), production quality.

[luis.hijarrubia]

Have you tried setting reflection and refraction caustics to none under Illumination & caustics section?

[Mihai]

I think it's rather direct refl/refr caustics you need to disable, not indirect.

[choo-chee]

well that's my render settings and still tons of caustics noise....

[Mihai]

I remember when those settings were added, there was a mention of exactly what created "direct reflected caustics" vs just simply indirect lighting. I'm not completely sure anymore but I think it had to do with the roughness setting most of all. The rougher the material, the more indirect lighting it created and less of it was considered caustics. Would be interesting to make some simple tests of this....

[choo-chee]

well I've tried to render with and without and no difference...

[PA3K]

Mihai is right,

there was discussion about it in the past. As I remember (not sure), there was something between 95-98% roughness border. Less was considered as caustic and more was just global illumination (diffuse colour bleeding).

Pa3k