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From: tim@cit-vlsi.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Amgia World Ray-tracing article...
Message-ID: <2471@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sat, 25-Apr-87 16:18:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.2471
Posted: Sat Apr 25 16:18:21 1987
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References: <629@puff.WISC.EDU> <448@applix.UUCP>
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Reply-To: tim@cit-vlsi.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay)
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Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:4094 comp.graphics:549

In article <448@applix.UUCP> scott@applix.UUCP (Scott Evernden) writes:
>Why is 1 hour of CPU time per ray-traced frame regarded as untenable for film
>making?
>
>The animation "Andre and Wally B." was produced on a VAX11/780, and the time
>per frame was 1-2 hours.  It is true, frames from that film regularly contain
>several thousand objects.

"Andre and Wally B." were computed on a Cray XMP/48.  (I was there when
they were computing.)  Some of the frames took many, many minutes on a
machine that large.  And it wasn't even ray traced.  The trees in the
background were computed on vaxes at MIT.  I don't know how long that
took.

One to two hours to ray trace on an Amiga is very good.  I haven't seen
the demo.  Is it antialiased?

Tim