3D Spectacular (CU Amiga December 1994)

Speed tests
To generate the test image, each program took:
Imagine 1hour 46 mins
Lightwave 2hours 52 mins
Real 3d 3 hours 2mins

Real took longer due to the use of splines to improve quality. Imagine was fastest at rendering but took longest to set up.
Packages were asked to produce an 800×600 24 bit image with anti-aliasing, shadows, etc. The test machine was an A3000 with a 50MHz 030/882 and 10MB of RAM.

A Question of Speed?
By now, most people have heard of a device called the Raptor offering incredible rendering power for around £15000 plus VAT. With this little beauty, Lightwave renders can be achieved at around 40 times the speed of that of a 4000/40 : quite nippy really. For Real power though, RealSoft can provide Andre ; Automated Network Distributed Rendering Engine. With this, you can render on as many machines as you have on a network including more Amigas, Pentium PCs, Dec Alpha workstations (nippy) and Silicon Graphics machines.

Contrary to popular belief, Lightwave hasn’t got the monopoly on snappy rendering : check with Activa UK for more information as they’ve got two Dec Alpha workstations linked up at the moment. Andy Leaning, are you still alive? Can you still walk? That’s real power for you…

Nick

Family man, international businessman and geek at heart.

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1 Response

  1. April 8, 2015

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