CompuServe Messages

Peter, from what I've seen so far, I would say that LW 3.0 is certainly faster than previous incarnations. However, I think that much of the talk surrounding its incredible speed may be attributed to hype. Likewise, Imagine has been given a bum rap for being exceedingly slow. Which it certainly isn't. Scanline rendering for both programs is about the same speed and Imagine doesn't add the kind of potential penalties for maximum antialiasing as LW does ( although I grant you that the maximum antialiasing in the new Lightwave is significantly superior to Imagine's maximum antialiasing). When raytracing is thrown into the conversation, my experience shows that Imagine can be up to four times faster than LW 3.0 on an '040 28 Mhz. For example, the bathroom scene contained in Volume 1 of the VRS Media Master Designers' Objects Series took 40 minutes to raytrace in Imagine. It took nearly four hours in Lightwave 3.0. On a 486/33, the Imagine raytracing took 15 minutes!!! Generally, 3D STudio is far faster than either Imagine PC/Amiga or Lightwave. However, for this scene, I turned on automatic reflection mapping, which meant that the program had to generate new images for every reflective surface in the scene. This bogged down the program and I ended up with a 30 minute rendering.