Quote - So.  I tripled checked all my glossy settings and specular settings.  Everything is nice and low.  I started another render and I think the flask exploded.  Every pass the scene gets worse, with more white stuff.  I'm at a total loss, I have no idea what's wrong.  Please help?

Not sure what happened to your flask! Firstly de-tick any of your glass settings is you have them set to 'hyper-realistic' and switch all your liquid settings if you have them set to water, to be standard glass as well, just for a start.

I have gone back to the latest download of the scene of Paolo's which has the test tube rack and glass globe moved apart (they were intersecting at one point). This is so I can now move all the textures and settings over one by one (I know I can save the settings and re-load them all in one go, but I want to find out what is causing the 'black' book and aerial. I left all the glass and liquid settings alone until I had set all the other objects. (Some items do default to standard glass, but they should be ok on the latest download)

I then found some very strange interactions with setting the flask liquid, if set to wwater the odd books and aerial went black, as also happened if I set hyper-realistic glass... I haven't had time to further investigate, but that alone seems odd, particularly as several people are getting the 'black' interaction. I did also find that when setting an item from glossy to water, the clour remained correct, but if I then turned it back to glossy, both the specular and the glossiness went to 255,255,255. So if you are changing materials back and forth it is always worth doublt checking your specular has changed to something crazy. I had to 'reload' studio setting to nmake it revert. It also felt that it was the original glossy material settings for specular (41,41,41) that seemed to be making the book/aerial black somehow... I do not know enough about the files to check what's going on, but there is definatly something. I don't know if it is related to the splitting up of the containers / liquids from their initial grouping or not... I will need to do the same tests using the original download from the original challenge site, as although the liquids etc are all one material, I suspect they may not give the same issues.

As a start though, set your glass to standard and water/liquids to standard glass too and see what happens... (I notice you have one of the aerials black! `¬) )

I'll check back at lunchtime, got to work now!

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