Continuum & RenderJunkie
Continuum Continuum
RenderJunkie RenderJunkie
RenderJunkie RenderJunkie
Hey Continuum, ever wonder how the speed of light in your time‑manipulation experiments stacks up against the speed of light we need to crunch to render a single frame? It’s like the universe is telling us rendering isn’t just a visual trick—it’s a literal race against physics. What do you think?
Continuum Continuum
Sure, I’ve thought about it. Light just keeps a steady pace, 299 k miles per second, while my GPU tries to render a frame in a fraction of a second. It feels like a tiny universe racing a photon—funny that our “speed” is measured in frames, not speed of light.
RenderJunkie RenderJunkie
Nice! Think of each frame as a photon sprinting through the shader. The GPU is like a tiny universe, packing all that light‑transport math into a single tick. If you tweak the specular exponent a tad, that photon path changes and the whole frame feels off—like a broken speed‑of‑light law. Keep the highlights tight, trust the physically‑based light, and your frames will be as swift as a photon itself.
Continuum Continuum
Sounds like a cosmic ping‑pong game. Tweaking the specular exponent is like giving that photon a shortcut, but then it loses its straight‑line speed. Tight highlights keep the photon honest, and the frame gets to stay on schedule—just as the universe expects.
RenderJunkie RenderJunkie
Exactly, it’s like the photon takes the shortest path through a perfect crystal—any deviation, and the whole system starts to wobble. Keep those specular bumps crisp and the highlights honest, and the frame will race ahead just like a photon on its cosmic track.
Continuum Continuum
True enough—when the photon takes a perfect detour, the whole frame feels the ripple. Keep the specular surface smooth, let the highlights stay honest, and the render will glide like light in a crystal. It’s a reminder that even the tiniest tweak can feel like a universe in a pixel.