White Dots in Water Droplet

[DMerz III]

Hey guys,

Seen quite a few posts both recent and old about the ever elusive "white dots" or "white spec" problem that occurs in Keyshot.
Attached is an example of what I'm talking about. It is just a region render at the moment because I'm just concentrating on solving this particular problem before rendering the whole scene.

The droplet is "Water" with the stock settings from Keyshot library.

The pink surface is a paint material with a roughness of .1 and IoR of 1.55
There is a slight procedural bump (Noise Fractal) on the pink surface as well.

This particular test was with Max Time, and I only let it run for about 15 minutes.
24 Ray Bounces (most likely overkill)
10 Indirect Bounces
3 Shadow Quality

Self Shadows ON
Global Illum. ON
Ground Illum. ON
Caustics ON
Interior Mode ON

I've done tests where I let it run a little bit longer, but it actually seems to produce MORE dots. So I'm trying other things.

Also, the lights in the scene are planes and circles set to Area Light Diffuse.  I know the proper way to light this might be to use IES lights, which I'm going to attempt here soon, but I'm wondering if someone else might have another solution offhand. Eventually there will be quite a few of these water droplets around the scene, so once I get this one figured out, I can populate the rest accordingly.

Thanks ahead of time!

David

[DMerz III]

Just reporting back, tried changing the Area Light Diffuse to IES lights. Seemingly better overall!

I'm still fairly new to IES profiles though, if anyone has tips for me, greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

DM

[LayC42]

If you have no ground plane and physical light, there's no need for caustics. Render the scene in max sample mode with 500 samples and look after 30 minutes. Are there still white dots, let keyshot run for a while or stop and save if the image is ok.

Hope that helps