After seeing many post on the issue of speed, I have to wonder to myself is faster better? Somehow I can't picture two art historians debating on weather John Doe was better then Rembrandt because he produced 3 pictures a day. I make images that say something to me and hopefully say something to the person veiwing it. The number of pictures done per day per week or per year has nothing to do with art in my opinion. I was wondering how other people feel about this? I can understand that in a proffesional atmosphere you are willing to sacrifice some quality for speed there is a deadline to meet. I can also understand all things being equal faster is better. But how do other people view it? When an image is done do you say "I am glad this only took me 10 mins to do" or do you say "this is me, this is what I want to say"? In the end will it be the program that produces a picture with one single click going to be the winner? At what point will it stop being the artist and start being the program? Perhaps we give our programs too much credit now, they are just tools. I hope. Just my views would love to hear what others have to say. Griggs

It's a tradeoff sometimes. Sometimes it's not, but it's often a matter of time vs. results. If you are doing a picture that takes 24+ hours to render (like my "Sanctuary") image, and you are an ordinary home user with 1 computer, that means you just can't do anything else for that whole time. That can be a major bummer. I am always interested first and foremost in getting an image out of my brain and into a viewable form. Once I've done all the work, which may take days or weeks of labor, I want a good final product. Sometimes that just means I have to wait (and wait, and wait, and wait) for the rendering to be done. If I could get faster rendering, I could be on to the next one(s) of the gazillions of projects seething in this quagmire I call my mind. I always have at least 5 or 6 images "cooking" at any given time, and when I have to wait for a long render (which I will certainly do when necessary) the other projects tend to start knocking up against my mental walls, wanting "out."

Also, sometimes it matters as far as production on the job. If person A can produce something faster than person B and the supervisor does'nt care (which unfortunately, sometimes they don't), then time is of the essence.

I would imagine in a production environment, you have a network. So network rendering to the rescue. I have a slow machine so everything is slow for me, but I manage to do my Bryce renders mostly in under an hour. I even did an 800x600 indoor scene with soft shadows that only took 4 hours. If you are in a situation where time really really counts you use tricks. If it's your own artwork then speed is only a convenience not a necessity. Spit

Well...yeah, unless it's a hobby. The Bryce renderer is drop dead gorgeous. And, too slow for any production work. I'm putting together a video that needed about nine minutes of animation total. Bryce was my first choice. 640x480, 30 fps, anti-aliased. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Also, as the complexity rises the workflow bogs down. As it does with any of the consumer 3d apps. But, Bryce sure is fun!

If you are doing production work, then you are probably working for a firm that can actually afford a high-end program to do it on. For us mere ordinary working mortals who will never be able to afford to get anywhere near a copy of Maya or even Lightwave, Bryce is still heaven. Slow heaven, but heaven.