I also had a thought to say about render times.

Unless we're listing the contents of the scene, and actually paying attention to the bounces and transparencies, as well as actually counting pixels rendered, when two of us compare numbers thrown at each other, we're not having a meaningful conversation.

I have done some wonderful IDL portraits of a clothed V4 with hair in under 8 minutes.

But which hair? Was it one with 3 layers of transparency, or 25?

Does this mean that the same person (me) is somehow being a more brilliant fellow to do a 30 second render of the same figure without any hair or clothes? Nope. That's a much easier problem for the computer. It wasn't smarter lighting or settings. In fact, they did not change.

And was my render of 320 thousand pixels (such as 400 by 800) or was it, as some have to do, 6 million pixels (such as 2000 by 3000)?

If I do a 400x800 render in 8 minutes, the same render will take at least 2.5 HOURS to do at 2000 by 3000. If we add in a few other requirements, such as DoF or maybe some scenery with glass, the same will now take 10 to 12 hours. This is not because I don't know how to use the settings. Nothing has changed. What matters is how much material there is to simulate bouncing light on and through, as well as how many pixels have to be calculated.

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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)