Tom Melly wrote:

> But is it easier for the artist to set up an effective picture? Can they in
> some way "cheat".

I'm no specialist in pro rendering software, but from what I understand, they
are very efficient in term of ease of use and speed, and they come bundled with
whole libraries of objects, textures, not to mention a large variety of
plug-ins. Things that would take hours to set up in pov can be done very
quickly, and because raytracing is often used only when it's needed (reflection
or refraction I guess), they're much faster (which means more time for tests
etc.).
Is it cheating ? I don't think so, because the fact that they are efficient
doesn't mean that you don't have to work a lot on a picture to get it right. The
latest IRTC "Stills" winner was a 3DS pic and when you compare it to pics from
3DS beginners you can see that a lot of work went into it and that its 1st place
was well deserved IMHO. In the present round, creating realistic plants with
NURBS is not little feat either.
In terms of output, POV, particularly in its latest flavours (uv mapping,
isosurfaces, improved radiosity, photon patch...) can do high quality stuff. We
even start seeing 3DS users sniffing around in the French pov group for that
reason. It just may take more time, sweat and tears from POV users, but since
the IRTC is about quality, not time-efficiency (something valued at professional
level), having both POV and 3DS competing is not unfair to POV. The only thing
that bugs me a little is that there is a lot of bootleg copies of the 3DS around
so I can't help seeing some "cheating" here, but I certainly don't want to be
moralistic and it has nothing to do with one's talent.

G.

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