Dealing with Artifacts in The Render? Please help, I am going insane trying to deal with this. I am pretty new to blender but i've just completed building a character. The face is pretty intricate and I had a feeling it was going to be a problem come rendering time.

I'm now trying to deal with a bunch of artifacts showing up on the face (like those above the eyebrow),


Luckily, it's only the face that's showing this problem. Unluckily I can't seem to find a solution. I've spent the last 5 hours going in and deleting and dissolving edges and vertices and at the end of that period it looked no better, the issues had just moved to new locations on the face. Can anyone offer some insight? if I just knew what the issue was I could start trying to fix it properly. Right now I just feel like i'm trying to blunder through to a solution.
The problem here is all about that evil word good modelers often use:
Topology
Here are some ways to improve this:

Do some research on good mesh topology techniques and USE THEM

Use smooth shading

Your model looks far to detailed right now (as far as vertex count)...try removing some of the edge loops, and adding a subdivision surface modifier

A lot of your trouble is coming from vertices that are actually inside the mesh...try switching to wireframe view to pull these out (if you cleanup your mesh and use a subsurf, this will be much easier to do

Finally, like Anson said, you should be checking your normals often...hit Ctrl + N


The technique of modeling with a subsurf modifier is huge!