Return-Path: Received: from exprod6og109.obsmtp.com ([64.18.1.23] verified) by media-motion.tv (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.2.10) with ESMTP-TLS id 4735900 for AE-List@media-motion.tv; Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:20:34 +0200 Received: from outbound-smtp-2.corp.adobe.com ([193.104.215.16]) by exprod6ob109.postini.com ([64.18.5.12]) with SMTP ID DSNKT854s7rsyxpn16M/0YN85iCHLCghu3k1@postini.com; Tue, 05 Jun 2012 14:23:01 PDT Received: from inner-relay-1.corp.adobe.com (inner-relay-1.adobe.com [153.32.1.51]) by outbound-smtp-2.corp.adobe.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id q55LMuX9018310 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2012 14:22:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nacas01.corp.adobe.com (nacas01.corp.adobe.com [10.8.189.99]) by inner-relay-1.corp.adobe.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id q55LMtvp023420 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2012 14:22:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nambx09.corp.adobe.com ([10.8.189.47]) by nacas01.corp.adobe.com ([10.8.189.99]) with mapi; Tue, 5 Jun 2012 14:20:47 -0700 From: Todd Kopriva To: After Effects Mail List Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 14:20:46 -0700 Subject: RE: [AE] Why a raytraced renderer? Thread-Topic: [AE] Why a raytraced renderer? Thread-Index: Ac1DJREkFquS2BCkTHOA3oIvemN20wAO3G9g Message-ID: <3087C3EE109D634A82116DB24F8B48450CD2AE33@nambx09.corp.adobe.com> References: In-Reply-To: Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 > I'm trying to get my head around Adobe's decision to go with the ray > traced renderer they did in AE6.=20 I just asked a couple of the software engineers involved about this decisio= n, and they say that a ray-traced renderer is more efficient for getting go= od-looking results for reflections, refractions, and shadows than would be = a scanline renderer. Our GPU-based ray-traced 3D renderer is actually quite= fast compared with anything that gives comparable visual results for these= light-related characteristics. That said, the CPU-based renderer is slow, = and we acknowledge that.=20 As far hardware dependencies: We officially support a couple dozen GPUs, an= d many of the high-performing ones (like the GTX 580) are not expensive.