Quote - Can anyone answer this: can a render engine take advantage in any way of grayscale over rgb? In otherwords, can it be triggered into dealing only with shades of black/white and thus process faster?

That's an interesting idea.... The JPEG file format does something similar by using the fact that humans are much less sensitive to color then luminosity to get high compression. Theoretically it should be possible to do the same for a render as well. I dont think any render engine can do this though. Better get a patent for the idea quickly before someone goes and creates one LOL.

Quote - That is indeed interesting.  I"ve heard in the past that top-end gaming cards aren't the best for top-end 3D work.

It's supported by a whole bunch of 3D companies, including Autodesk, Softimage, Cebas etc so they must be doing something right ;)

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