HDRI area light extremely noisy

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm using an Arnold area light with an HDRI softbox image mapped to the colour. The scene has a lot of metallic textures in overlapping strands. The lighting looks really nice but it's extreeeeeemly noisy. I have tried all the usual adjustments with diffuse/specular samples (and light samples on the light itself). I've tried the clamp values/ rays etc too. They don't make much difference except for slowing the renders down hugely. I just wondered if I am doing something wrong here, or if there is something i've missed? Perhaps there is a way to clamp the values of the hdri somehow and still retain the nice look on the reflections?

[lee_griggs]

How many light samples are you using?

Renders and screengrabs of your sample settings would be very useful. If you can upload the scene somewhere too that would be great.

Tutorials about removing noise can be found here.

[Anonymous]

Weird... I replied yesterday and my answer didn't show up. Anyway thanks for the swift response Lee. I discovered one of the main textures had transmission left on, I had thought it was off. So hadn't been checking for transmission noise. That's what it was. Thanks for the link- it nudged me to check!