CompuServe Messages

One of the scenes I rendered just to see what would happen (I tried to do most of the testing on the first day – just to get an idea and start doing some real work) consisted of the following: Motion Man model surfaced as glass Actual stars background a "sun" off to the side Reflection ON, Refraction ON, Shadwos ON A4000 040 18MB RAM time: 1 hour 14 minutes 24 seconds RAPTOR with 128MB RAM time: 7 minutes 11 seconds The speed increases were pretty consistent even with quick render scenes. They only delay I have noticed is from the saving of frames to Hard Drives. But this is a "problem" with a none RAPTOR system anyway. One option that the Screamernet offers is to have each processor work on a separate scene – much like a Wavelink setup the computer is actually rendering two scenes at a time. But NewTek technical support was not able to tell me if the files are saved in sequence or randomely (ie. one processor finishes before the other and screws up the sequence for the PAR). This "Independent" rendering option is suppose to offer the fastes rendering times, but as I do not know how the scenes are saved (in or out of sequence) I have not used it yet. My numbers are based on the Automatic rendering option which lets both processors work on a single scene. You will notice a significant speed increase on any scene regardless of how quickly it renders. An example is the Fighter scene that comes with the Toaster. If I recall (it was a week ago), an A4000 040 was rendering the first few scenes were the ships are very small at around 50 seconds or so, with the RAPTOR it was rendering them at around 14 seconds. As the scene got more complex and as the ships became larger the speed jumped 10.35 X faster. I use an IBM compatible to access Compuserve, so access to the Amiga images is not very convinient, but I will upload a real "glassy" scene with a lot of refraction and reflection so that you guys can get an idea of how tremedous the speed increases are. I just hope I can fit the scene on a floppy to take over to the PC and upload.