CompuServe Messages

3D programs advance by differentiation, so each program has one or two whiz-bang features that the others don't have. Other features are more basic and have a more dramatic effect on rendering times. For example, have you given any thought to whether the test scene is made of randomly oriented or consistently normal'd polygons? Is it polygons or triangles? LightWave does better with multi-point polygons. Any LW "expert" will probably (rightfully) argue that a triangle-heavy scene is an unfair comparison. 3D Studio uses only triangles, but its triangles can be oriented, which speeds rendering times in the same way that LightWave's polygons can be one-sided or not. Imagine's triangles are randomly oriented. So, for example, converting an Imagine object to LW and 3DS would be non-optimal in several ways: triangle orientation and no polygons. Converting LW to Imagine or 3DS would reduce all those nice polygons to triangles. (If you use Pixel to do this, the triangles will be randomly oriented even though the original polygons were oriented; but InterChange will preserve the original normal on all the resulting triangles.) I'd recommend at least two test scenes: one that originated whoops, make that at least one test scene created solely in each program you intend to compare. Let the experts in that program optimize the scene however they like. Provide a rendered image to the other platform's teams and let them translate the data as they like and optimize as they like to obtain the "same" results. You may need to agree on what constitutes a fair "tweak": removing polygons would be illegal, but re-orienting them would be OK. Along another axis, you might want to vary the scenes according to all those other whiz-bang surface attributes: render once each in wireframe, "quick" renders with simple shading, then on to the more complex additions. It would help compare the programs. You'd certainly have a lot of data to present, and it would lead to a lot of useful hot air in all the 3D-related forums. You might invite the Macromedia 3D people from the Macromedia Forum, other CAD-related companies from the CADENCE, LEAP and ACAD forums, etc. beyond the 3D Studio people.