Quote - Really good to see others as excited about this new renderer as I am, even though it is but at the early stages of development. The fact that OSL has been enabled for it means exciting times ahead.

Since the 2.5 rewrite, I've really, really liked Blender (I can't understand the people who are still sticking with 2.49b). Though DAZ Studio and Blender are awesome programs, I find I'm able to pose and animate much faster in Blender, and I like the additional flexibility a full-featured 3D program offers.

But, Blender really was missing a good renderer. Blender Internal was state of the art back in 2004 or so. :) And integrating with YafaRay or another third party renderer is such a hassle, and you lose out on one of Blender's main advantages - how integrated everything is. Getting render layers back into Blender's compositor, for example, is a real hassle with an external renderer.

So, yeah, I do see huge potential with Cycles. With the node-based materials and OSL support coming in the next release, amazing things are going to be possible. Even as it is now, I've gotten some pretty amazing results with it and I can't wait until I can totally forget the Internal renderer exists. :)

Let me know how the shaders work for you. They're nothing fancy, but I've been pretty happy with the results given the current limitations (no SSS, etc.).