Hello all,

I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).

The scenes use multiple moving light sources, and various lenses and
bodies of simulated water with reflection and refraction. To really
slow things down, I also want the lenses to be out of focus using
aperture effects (which are turned off in thye example frame above).

My question is, are there faster ray-tracers that run on simple
networks (like 3-6 InteliMacs in a lab)? (Parallel POVray is still M$-
Windoze-only.) I've looked into Tachyon, but its scene description
language looks really primitive compared to POVray, and I'm uncertain
as to whether it's still being developed. I've also found Radiance, Lux
and MPV, but can't determine which scales best.

So many of the web references I find are really stale.
Where is this discussion taking place?
Are there other sites or lists for up-to-date info?

......any reply appreciated...

Stephen Pope
UCSB

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