Does anyone know of the possibilities of an IPAS that does raytracing and/or
radiosity inside 3DS? Or any suggestions for a program that works with 3DS
files and does a good job of raytracing? If so, how does it work as far as
animated scenes go?
Charles:
I don't know if anyone has responded to your questions about radiosity or
raytracing. There are several 3DS format compatible raytracers available.
Rayman is one that gets a lot of coverage here on the forum and will support
animation in its latest release. Another, Lightscape is soon to release an NT
version of its raytracer/radiosity renderer which will also be released as a
plug-in for the upcoming 3DS MAX. (FWIW, the computation time required for
radiosity often makes it impractical to animate anything but the camera.) I
suppose you could import 3DS files into programs like Lightwave or Truespace,
etc. but I don't know if material definitions would follow.
– Bob Ritger