[Bf-committers] Qdune and the render API

[David Bryant]

  I've observed all the conversation over this issue and really the answer 
is basic.Any Renderman compliant renderer or micropolygon renderer is 
"always" going to be slower than it's basic counterparts.Why? It simply has 
more work to do.

Pixar's Renderman,Turtle.Maxwell ,and all other commercial renderers selling 
point is not their speed but the quality of their renders.If you're looking 
for it to compete with straight raytracers.The common renderer is going to 
win hands down every time.If Qdune can render an awesome render in a 
"reasonable" timeframe,you've reached your goal.If you optimized the code to 
get even a 10% speedup you've done even better.

Every feature Blender has up to this point has started from version 1.0 as 
it were.All the features in Blender has been strengthened over time.

The ultimate question should be can it do what it's supposed to do 
"now".What you would like it to do will come later as you improve on it.

Mental Ray is in it's fourth revision,Turtle is in it's third, Renderman is 
in it's 12th or 13th and so on.Don't judge heavy duty renderers soley on 
their render speed.Production quality customizable renderers are not as fast 
as you might think.
So utimately the base decision is do you want to still work on it and go 
from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 and so on.

I always forget to change my format to plain text instead of HTML.Sorry.