[Bf-cycles] Cycles geometry synchronization

[Matthew Heimlich]

Hey all,

I was thinking about the long sync step when rendering with Cycles and had
a couple of questions. As far as I can tell, external renderers in other 3D
packages done require this step. Is this because the other
renderers/packages directly use the geometry data already in memory
directly from the 3D package? If so, this makes me wonder if this step is a
due to a limitation of Cycles not being as deeply integrated with Blender
as it could be (if I recall it was originally intended to operate as a
standalone that could work with other packages as well) or if there is a
limitation with Blender itself in terms of the data it makes available to
external programs.

As I understand it, the process now is:

Start rendering process ->
Copy geometry data from Blender to a Cycles buffer ->
Build BVH based on this data ->
Begin intersection tests

With the geometry copy being a very time consuming step, especially for
complex scenes. Please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. Just trying to
continue wrapping my head around the inner workings of Cycles as a whole.
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