"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I still think the media and aa are bigger culprits, but I agree it would be
> faster. However, I'd have to use normal on in the radiosity block if I wanted
> the shape of the floor visible in the shadowed areas, and that might well knock
> the render time back again. I'll try it next time I make one of these images.

Consider this:

"normals on" in a radiosity block causes radiosity to take fake surface normal
variations into accunt, thereby increasing the number of samples required...

.... as compared to a perfectly flat surface. If you generate the same variations
in surface normals via true geometry, you get the same increase in required
number of samples. *Plus* the general ray-object intersection testing slowdown
from using isosurfaces.

The isosurface may turn out to be superior though, because of its ability to
self-shadow at the perimeter where the angle between light source and surface
is very shallow.

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