"Mike Hough" <Ama### [at] aolcom> wrote...
> I tried using photons in a scene recently and was suprised at how long it
> took to render it in 3.5 RC5.  I'm posting in this group in case I'm
missing
> some subtle change in the photon syntax. The following scene at 320x240,
AA
> 0.3 takes 19 seconds to render in MegaPOV 0.5 and 3 minutes 37 seconds to
> render in RC5.

Since RC4 (or maybe RC5), POV 3.5 uses a slightly different algorithm to
compute the "initial gather search radius" for photons.  This new algorithm
is a bit more conservative in its selection of the search radius, which will
lead to higher quality results with much fewer artifacts.  However, this
means that the results will be slower than MegaPov's agressive approach.

I'm adding a new feature (as part of the radius keyword for the photon block
inside global settings) that will give the user more control over the
initial gather search radius.  This will allow power users to tweak the
search radius and decrease the size to increase speed (at the risk of adding
artifacts).  In the future I might come up with an even better algorithm for
computing the initial search radius, or even come up with a better adaptive
search radius.

-Nathan

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