What's the difference between using the blurred reflection code in _Light_Beam_'s link
and rendering
an animation with a single texture level on the object, and averaging the output
images?

The image at http://www.chris-j.co.uk/blurs.jpg shows blurred refraction more than
blurred
reflection (the surface is also slightly reflective, as can be seen on the bottom side
of the
sphere), but also shows the dramatic speedup when an averaged animation is used rather
than multiple
layers of texture. Making an animation with 8 (rather than 80) blur samples looks
different from the
multiple-layered image with 8 samples, suggesting that the method does produce
different-looking
results, but it seems (at least in this scene) that the animation method is gives a
much faster (if
less accurate) result.

http://www.chris-j.co.uk/blurs2.jpg shows the result of the T_Silver_3C pigment and
finish with an
80-frame-averaged animation, and unscaled (as opposed to x1000, as in the code
referenced above)
bumps 0.3. The innacuracies caused by using too few frames in the average are just
about visable
here.

I'm sure this method must have been thought of before - is there any reason why it
should be
inferior in accuracy than using multiple layers of texture?

-Chris

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