" had toy story been rendered on one machine loaded with the most powerful CPU in the world at that time ,the render time would have still been over 256 years."

Well, it's not just the advancement of horsepower that would make the difference, but raytracing and render technology has advanced quite dramatically since TS 1 as well, and it continues to.

Back then, GI calculations would have been unheard of for use in actual production work, but today, it's possible to some extent, with advanced render algorithms like photon mapping, etc. Even as recently as a few years ago, even the pros were saying GI was unusable in production, when suddenly renderers like Brazil and Vray proved that it was possible.

A full-length feature film that is convincing enough to pull off CG character(s) without the audience even knowing would definitely require a massive collaborative effort, even if real-time photoreal rendering were a reality right now, but I think Spielberg is speaking in theoretical terms. Obviously, there's so much that goes into a full movie, one person could never accomplish it to the level of total believability by themselves, if just because of the work involved in the modeling and animation portion itself. Message edited on: 06/20/2005 15:37

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