Gaaaaa! The most tedious thing about this implementation is the randomness built in. You can do two renders in a row with identical settings and get very different shapes on the shadows. This drives me batty. I can't figure out whether a difference is just a coin toss or because of a change I'm testing in settings.

The selection of "random" rays should be pseudo-random, with a user-defined seed. Given the same seed value, the same rays should be used every time. If you get bad luck and happen to hit a particular case that isn't optimal, then you would change the seed.

One of the things that has always helped me learn fast in Poser is to adjust render settings for lower quality to get a feel for how things work. But at lower quality settings, the results are so wildly different from one render to the next, I don't really learn much from a couple test renders.

Having to go with better settings and wait 20 minutes to see how a parameter affects things is excuciating.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)