Eye was looking dark and noisy. In hindsight, my glass material for the lens was NOT fully white. That was my mistake. HOWEVER, this fixed the problem (just as having a fully white material likely would have):
Under the Object tab for the lens, in the Cycles Settings section, uncheck the “Shadow” option. Slightly unrealistically (in most cases), what this does is prevent the object from casting a shadow (what I suspected was happening to my eye - not enough light getting in). This is handy to know now and again. Here’s the effect it had on my render:
Depending on how many verts you’ve got, what your lighting is like (high key or low key), the resolution of your textures/work, and how many “bounces” your light has, 500 samples is very little.
The distortion you saw in your eye meant you were rendering at too low a sample rate and getting “noise”. Some images I’ve done I’ve rendered with over 5000 samples. By unchecking “Shadow” you effectively got rid of some detail in order to render it at that sample rate without noise.
Not saying it’s the wrong way of doing it, it all depends on what you want to have in your work and what details you can live without. Higher details means rendering at a higher sample rate. It is possible to render this image with “Shadow” on, but you’d have to try… like (ballparking here) 1500-2000 samples (assuming your resolution is something low at 100%). Though higher samples become a must with the addition of hair particles.
Yeah, thanks for the heads up! I appreciate what you’re saying, and if someone were going for fully accurate photorealism, then it stands to reason that they’d steer clear of anything like what I did.
500 samples is tiny, I agree. Still takes a while though (as someone who usually animates, even 500 samples can be a killer for render times!).
For me though, I can live with just approximating photorealism.
I can turn down my samples now, and save time on rendering. Optimisation!