Raytracing takes a looooooong time. But boy, is it worth it, if you have the opportunity to do this. The "party piece" of this post is the top image. The other two are grand, but the top one is the best. And for each of the three renders today I'm presenting the Raytraced versions and the deep shadow mapped versions ... at 100% full size. I invite you to view them at 1:1 size, just as they were rendered, and compare.
The downside? Even with 8 Gigs of available ram (4G in chips, 4G in Ready Boost), and with a 1 Gig video card, it still takes at least an hour to get a render like this, when you click over to Raytracing.
But ... what a difference! There's a classical quality about these renders ... the "feel" of those Fredrick Remington bronzes. Is that fantastic, or what? I'm going to go back to some of my favorite characters and renders from the last couple of months, and Raytrace them, now that I have the video card and the ram to do it with!
Jade, 28 May
