"Light freckles" problem in clear plastic material animation

[Lenio]

I saw the term light freckles in another post, but no answer there assisted me in figuring out my issue...in the attached screen shot, I am:

– using the stock "Clear Shiny Plastic White" material
– a couple spotlights in the scene for lighting
– self shadows and a 5 shadow quality
– 14 ray bounces with 1 global illumination (also tried 2) and product mode, caustics on and off
– 512 samples

Even with all of that, when I render this animation the material has the light freckles popping in and out. So then I tried denoise at 0.8, and all that did is make the Plastic look like flowing water.

Where do I begin to troubleshoot the light freckles to get a nice clean plastic and animation? Thanks!

[topsecretagent]

Are you using physical lights in your scene? I've experienced similar light particle issues when using a bright physical light in my scene!

[Lenio]

Yup, had a 5 physical lights and 5000 lumens each (yikes!). Trimmed it to two lights at 500 lumens and switched to a different environment. Then bumped it from 512 to 800 samples. THEN in After Effects I used the Neat Reduce Noise effect so that the animation looked smooth -- it even added a film look to the animation that I find pretty cool.

[Lenio]

I tried removing them altogether but couldn't get the highlights like I wanted.
The video actually went live yesterday – here is the result:
https://vuzix-website.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/videos/vuzix-next-gen-tech_3-01-sept-2020.mp4