Hi monparsons,
Thanks for the file, very much appreciated.
Let me summarize what I tried to say above, very short and on the point.
You have either sharp highlights, or you have soft highlights from the Area lights in PSB mode.
If you have soft reflections on the glass, then the Reflection channel has a Transparency layer. This is based on “Beckman,” and the Roughness is set by default to 10%. THIS (!) the starting point of the grainy border.
In case you like to have it soft, you need to increase the samples of that layer, perhaps even to 12: Layer Sampling> Sampling Subdivision: 8 to 12 (based on your target.) This will increase the render-time heavily!
A sharp reflection is achieved while Roughness is set to 0%.
This is all there is to it.
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In previous versions of Cinema 4D this (Roughness=0%) was the default. Now it is 10%, and that is the difference, so far, I can tell.
To adjust the Anti Alias means that you render the whole image in a higher AA, or you set up specific tags to fine-tune it. Which I think should be considered not as the first remedy.
Three are a few things that I like to share since more people read along:
Specular highlights, the fake version, is for a decade not really the first choice anymore. The fake approach was good back in the last century when CPUs were slow. Besides some notable developments back there (Pixar’s RenderMan, had a Window frame option), those fake Specular Highlights were always round and often looked fake even. Pure reflection is used these days instead.
If you need soft reflections, I suggest placing an object add a material there and a gradient shader (Luminance channel) with a soft border, just to get the light source reflection super smooth and do not pay the price of extreme samples.
The Private Message box is up and in the middle of this interface.
My best wishes.