Renders Not Using Values in 'Sampling' Section of Scene Tab (2.80, Cycles)

Question

OK, so something bizarre just started happening with a scene I'm working on. I have 'Render' samples set to 128, and 'Viewport' samples set to 32 (this is in Cycles).

I don't know what I might have done, but NOW when a scene is being rendered in the viewport it's showing 'Path Tracing Sample x/1024' as it's rendering the scene. Normally, it would show 'x/32', as you would expect.

Needless to say-- now when I go to do a final render, instead of taking 2-3 minutes, it's telling me it will take HOURS.

When I start up a fresh scene, I don't have this issue, so I must have done something wacky with a setting somewhere, but I cannot figure it out!

Can anyone help?

Thanks! Bryan

Answer 1

You have likely enabled Square Samples which results in Cycles using the squared number of samples. Therefore the number viewport render samples are: $$32^2=1024$$

For the final render the number of samples are: $$128^2=16384$$