photonmap vs lightmap

[jotta]

Hello, i have this interior scene with many lights from the roof. I been triying to get good results but i only get very noisi renders or very long render times. so i changed to photonmap and i get much better results with the shadows in the corners. But the problem come with the metal reflections. As you can see, in photonmap mode the ball i think is not reflecting the shadows or something, so it seems way less realistic. Althoug in lightmap the ball have splotches it seems more real than in photonmap, and also the metal of the chair. Is that normal? do i have to change some settings in photonmap to get realistic reflections?

Thank you

[jotta]

another image. same settings in boht scenes. the first one i think have good reflections in photonmap. the second one looks totally unreal and i dont know why

[jure]

Your lightmap looks bad in reflection because your reflective ball has small reflection blur and your blurring accuracy is set to 1%. Therefore it only reflects phoron estimate solution not the full FG solution. Switch to 0% refl blur on surface or change blurring accuracy limit to higher number than your surface material.