#rayman
Mike,
now that you've elaborated I can see where you coming from.
However, I still contend that the best production-worthy, industry standard
renderer is not a ray-tracer – it's Renderman, a scan-line renderer.
Furthermore, IMHO the the 3ds renderer, in the right hands, comes pretty close
to Renderman quality. It's all in the lighting. I suggest you investigate the
use of multiple lights with attenuation active, to simulate radiosity.
If you want as close to photo-real as possible AND you are doing stills AND
time is no object, I think you should take a look at radiosity renderers.
Now, if we are talking reflections/refraction then Rayman, may well come into
it's own. I may even buy it myself but only for very limited use for water like
effects. This might be impractical because of the rendering times – because I'm
talking of animation AND film resolution (2k).
Do you know if Rayman will work with metaballs?
Martin