Thanks for these I appreciate it.
Area light: I did add a low poly square plane on the other side of the room (behind the camera) and turned it into an emitter. That helped a bit but not enough. It's a texture emitter and the diffuse is set to white, so that might be causing some noise here based on the lighting page linked above.
Render layers: This is for an animation, so for the time it would take to render out multiple sets of frames and composite them I might as well jack up the max samples instead and let the gpus do the work.
Photon Kernel: Hmm, I'd like to experiment with this one. I do have some sub surface scattering going on in the scene as well. Any idea on how well the Photon Kernel handles SSS (if at all)?
elsksa wrote:Non-exhaustive list of random thoughts/tips:
• do not hesitate to support the primary day-light source with camera-invisible area-lights, especially in dark areas where light bounces are expected or just to have more control.
• render layers could be beneficial in some cases, requiring an assembling in post (comp).
• I haven't done it yet, but the Photon Tracing Kernel might "perform" better than PT with that glass-window. It would theoretically handle caustic paths with [more] ease compared to it.