I don't believe it! Two barrels, and he's going down again!

[Ethrieltd]

Well...

[Dune]

Nice idea. You can clearly see the (known) water issue though; two lines of strange reflections, and some random strange reflections. If you're willing to experiment a bit, you could try a higher render subdivision setting (default 0.25), maybe see what 1 does, or use a reflective shader with a smooth variable of 0.004 for reflection after the water shader (turn reflection off in water shader). For higher smoothing you might need to raise sample/quality.

[luvsmuzik]

Love the JAWS reference. I wondered if you were trying for a suction type effect or raindrops, but whatever it is, good stuff!

[Ethrieltd]

Nice idea. You can clearly see the (known) water issue though; two lines of strange reflections, and some random strange reflections. If you're willing to experiment a bit, you could try a higher render subdivision setting (default 0.25), maybe see what 1 does, or use a reflective shader with a smooth variable of 0.004 for reflection after the water shader (turn reflection off in water shader). For higher smoothing you might need to raise sample/quality.

Yeah, I noticed the the weird lines. They weren't really visible till I moved the sun, and then they became apparent. I might have a play with the settings you suggested and see what the result is.  I was quite surprised that the render only took about 1 1/2 hours anyway. I was expecting a geologic timescale with a 50-50 pic of sky and water (a planet sized {well, default setup} lake object/no terrain and, yes I know...) so it hasn't killed it for this one yet.

[bobbystahr]

Well...

oil well? heh heh...cool render!

[Ethrieltd]

So, I adjusted the render subdivision setting:

[attach=1]

The lines have vastly diminished but are still there, random reflections problem is pretty much cleared up... The barrel reflections is still weird. Render time went up, was somewhere around 2hrs 20mins.

[attach=2]

Will reset the render subdivision and try option 2...

[attach=3]

Lines are still there, about the same as before, a few weird "spots" have crept back in. The barrels reflection seems more natural, one little weird stripe. Rendered in just over 1hr 50mins.

[attach=4]

I guess it's a LARGE expanse of water, which being pretty smooth doesn't help, the lines sort of converge towards the camera. What's the deal with that?

Well, I've learned a bit about water, if nothing else...

[Dune]

The first one definitely shows improvement, no more weird reflection artifacts. You may try setting it a little lower (0.5-0.8 or so) to get a good balance between render time and lack of black specs. Smooth reflections is not the way to go obviously, but you could also try using zero transparency in the water shader to reduce render time. In that case use a soft pf with watery greenish colors as the base before the reflective shader (without smoothing). You could also localize the smoothing of reflections, just for the barrels, where it's most important.
To get rid of the lines, try a sphere the size of the planet (no shadows) instead of the lake object, or move the lake object a 100m to the side or so.