What are these speckles?

[Coen Naninck]

I've seen these on a few renders. What are the colored dots (enlarge the image otherwise you may not see them)?

[CTZn]

You are using PT alone (wether gpu or not), is it ? That's caracteristic.

This happens when a ray hits the sun. That's statistically a very rare event in open sky, a ray is waaaay more likely to hit the sky instead of that tiny shiny thing up there.

Hint:

enlarge the image otherwise you may not see them

Reversely, use supersampling and you may not notice them anymore. This is its primary use.

[Coen Naninck]

Supersampling, got it! Thx.

But this I don't understand:

enlarge the image otherwise you may not see them

[CTZn]

Supersampling, got it! Thx.

But this I don't understand:

enlarge the image otherwise you may not see them

The quote sure doesn't make sense if it is detached from the sentence below. Also I may sometimes fail in expressing simple ideas in english.

I meant that the thumbnail is to the linked image akin of what a final render would be to the internal buffer (your render in this example) when using supersampling. The fact that bright pixels aren't visible in the thumbnail is exactly what one would expect from supersampling.

The supersampling value is simply a multiplier to the image resolution, but what users see is the downsampled result. We call the large, hidden version "the internal buffer".

Please forgive me if that doesn't make any sense

[Coen Naninck]

So in essence it's basically Anti-Aliasing but done differently?

[CTZn]

It's brute force anti-aliasing, yes.

[Coen Naninck]

Thanks.

Excellent English by the way.