Rendered animations, or what could be put in layman's terms as 'moving pictures that look real', can pose some real issues for those that create them.

Let me rephrase, creating rendered animations has posed some difficulty for us here at Coastal Concepts, and I'm sure we are not alone. The issue comes about because rendering and ray-tracing require a lot of computing power. Despite the relentless improvements in computing hardware some still images require hundreds of hours of computing on machines that are significantly more powerful than the average family PC.

My initial solution to the problem was to link up many redundant computers on a local network to create a cost effective render farm. This is still a potential avenue for us to investigate but requires more capital investment than initially anticipated, so more demand for such a service is required before we develop it further.

But as any experienced cat-skinner will tell you, there is always more than one way to do it.

So instead of trying to fight gravity and obtain more and more power, the solution, this time round, seems to be to go the other way, to lighten the load. You see, ray tracing uses complex mathematical algorithms to work out how light acts in a certain model and creates an image through computing these algorithms (I wont pretend to understand how the technicalities of this actually work).

So do we need such complex algorithms?

To get a high quality still image from ray tracing many purists believe unbiased rendering is the only way to go. Unbiased rendering makes less assumptions about the way certain materials act in certain light conditions and thus can be controlled more accurately. Given the right user, this allows a more realistic image to be created.

But when it comes to movies and animations, the Nth degree of detail isn't noticed by the viewer because the image is moving. So these more complex algorithms required for super good-looking still pictures aren't needed for super good looking moving pictures. Therefore, less complex maths can be employed to give a very similar visual effect, and voila, the computing load has been lightened immensely.

It is now much easier for Coastal Concepts to provide ray traced videos of any project, from any angle. This is a much more pleasing presentation and really provides the 'wow' factor when you are using our 3D modeling services to promote your product or potential project.

Check out this test video, bearing in mind that I have just fired it through the renderer without texturing it properly.