....any hope of getting an IRTC entry done in time...

I'm working on some smoke for a catastrophe so I defined three textures
which I combine on a pillar of spheres. Test renders on a few spheres
indicated it was slow but usable.  Rendering the column of smoke with plain
pigments substituted takes about 6 seconds, so the object itself isn't a
problem, but when I put the final textures on the column it gets sooooo
slooooww I can't believe it.  I started a render last night before I went
to bed, when I left for work this morning almost 8 hrs later it was only on
line 23.  And I still need to add radiosity.

Sorry, don't have the textures here at work, but they are something like:
texture {
  pigment {
    granite scale 3
    color_map {
      [0.00 rgbf 1] [0.30 rgbf 1] [1.00 rgbf <.960, .940, .910, .810>]
    }
    warp { turbulence 1 octaves 5 lambda 4 }
  }
  finish { ambient .1 diffuse .55 }
}

Any suggestions on how to speed this up?

I'm currently building the column in layers and applying the texture to each
layer as I go. Does applying the texture to the whole union vs individual
spheres vs layers of spheres make a large difference?

Does the ambient component in the finish affect speed? The textures all have
different ambient levels and it seems like the less ambient one is slightly
faster.

Alternately, does anyone have a fast smoke texture that works in POV 3.5?

At the current rate, I'll never get a render finished by the deadline.

RG

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