CompuServe Messages

Your admiration for radiosity effects is understandable, but it needs to be understood that while the radiosity renderings can be drop dead beautiful they do take an apreciable amount of time. In addition to what everyone has said about radiosity, you should also realize that it is usually expressed in terms of a "solution" – because energy continues to bounce throughout the scene it is never really "done" <g>. Lightscape refers to its renderings as "10 minute soultion", "2 hour solution" and even "3-day solution". Getting something on the screen IS quick, but the refinement of the image towards photorealism takes time. Now Lightwave can calculate specular reflections (somwhat unique for a radiosity renderer, & stills only I beleive) but doing so causes another radiosity pass – the reflections are bouncing their own energy, which in turn reflect in the image differently, which in turn bounces more energy….. The real knock out images take TIME, and that's on SGIs. The comment made about tesselation was also a bit understated. Ask Lightwave to toggle to "wireframe" mode, examine where the long face splinters are, toggle back to rendered mode, and examine the shading at those locations. These are areas that take time to get looking right, and you may not notice the shading differences until you shift your viewing position. But don't get me wrong <g>. Lightscape is a wonderful lighting simulator, and as I mentioned to you before, it's a bonified architectural lighting tool and any lighting designer that can get a system is indeed lucky. A 100w PAR and a 500w halogen produce the correct illumination, and you have the ability to custom make any type of real or imaginary light source. The ability to walk around the solved image is stunning. When hardware and software come together in a timely and affordable manner this rendering technique will be truely exciting and extremmely useful. – Phil