I'm re-rendering my "Somewhat Fetish" pic with more ligths and a bit of volumetrics. It is taking eons to render, but this is not the problem.

The problem are the little "squary" artifacts I'm getting in one part of the picture (you can see the detail above): they are those little grey lines that weren't supposed to be there! The subject is a 2D pic inside two very thin glass cubes which make the frame. I'm rendering with normal AA and I'm at 75% of the AA pass (so this detail, up in the right corner, is already AAsed).

My suspect is that, to reduce the monstrous render times (over 10 days estimated), I tweaked the "Maximum Ray Depth" down to 4, plus I checked TIR and set to 3 max, and this caused the problem.

Ah, and I have soft shadows on most of the lights. Anyone could point me out what I'm doing wrong here? And, if I did the mistake I think I did, is it possible to plop-render the wrong part after it's finished? I don't want to restart from scracth, this pic is in the oven for 4 days already...

Thanx in advance.
Stefano

Simple suggestion, - if you cannot clearly see the glass sheet edges in the final render, substitute a single simple cube for both of them. place the 2d face inside the cube in the same depth ads if behind one sheet previous. It may actually help with the render time. As to the grey lines, check your mapping of the glass texture. Sometimes this happens with the offside faces when you have x top, x front or x side set as mapping. Just a suggestion. Looking forward to the final image.

Incarnadine is right, glass will bump up render times and a single cube should suffice with your 2d face inside...same appearance, less fuss

Thanx a lot, I'll try this. Stefano

Another thing, Doublecrash, although this may have nothing to do with your image, is the use of Alpha channels and "Volumetric World". You can't use the two together, which sucks, but I'm not sure if you're using VW or not? For example, using VW with the 2D "pict" trees will show each of the square borders that are the edges of the image map... It sucks, but alas, such is life... Hope to see the finished version, IMO that's one of the best Bryce images I've seen!