I'm continuing my work on my watch, this is my first project that I'm really making an effort to get a photorealistic look into.

This is the current state of my project and I'm having some questions:

1. The material on the bulges of the "outer ring" doesn't render properly. I want the material to be a somewhat semi-plished/brushed stainless steel type of material and I use the prefabricated ProMaterials, which I'm considering to drop all together cause the mesh is flawless (it really is, I triple checked it) when I render with other materials (standard) I get a smooth result but the ProMaterials seems to cap of the top faces of the mesh giving weird results. I tried using them on a sphere in a blank scene and it produced the same result, so I need some good directions or advice in making good materials, it's a jungle to me and I'm very inexperienced in making materials

2. The text and graphics on the display of the watch are made with the "composite" material with a standard material with added bump-maps as a base and .png images (with the inherent alpha-channel for the transparency) for the text and details. However, when I render them out they are being outlined by streaks of white noise, that makes it look crappy. I've double checked the images in photoshop and the edges aren't anti-aliased or anything (one of them provided as-is below)

3. Same method is used on the three small clocks, but the numbers and lines tend to float together not staying as crisp as I want them. When I render very zoomed in they are fine, but the more I zoom out the blurrier they get. Solution?

Other general questions:

I'm using an HDRI as an environment map but I have to change the output to ludicrous levels (6000) to get it to show up in a good manner has this anything to do with the exposure control?

Speaking of which, I'm having really hard time understanding the exposure controls. There are several but since I'm working with mental ray I'm using the mr Photograpic one. The preview or even the render doesn't seem to correspond very well to what I see in the viewport even though the image changes in the viewport as I adjust the values.

I'm really thinking about switching to vray, but I've never worked in it before.

Thanks for any help/tips/comments.

[EDIT] Just noticed that the .png images didn't work in uploading, where's the "remove file" button??

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