Hi @nathanletwory, I wonder if it is possible for you to change cycles first iteration-image.
I have tried to explain this before, so I try again with some images.
Take a look at how much black there is in this first pass of an image:
Here is the image after 200 passes:
As you can see it has no black, and it is still quite nosy.
So I wonder if it is possible for the first pass to only use rendered pixles, at an even lower resolution ala this:
I imagine that would make it much better to navigate and result in less noice in the 200th pass, even if the first pass would take a bit longer to calculate.