Nah -- I was just asking if anyone knew why my renders popped out such a large margin faster than most high-end computers popped out with fairly decent results. Came to me a while ago that most high end computers run radiosity solutions, which when combined with raytracing (like Rhino 3d/Flamingo does --) can take days to properly render.

Before I thought of radiosity, I knew
1) My computer was DEFINITELY slower than Pixar's
2) My render times were in the minutes, not hours, with raytracing and blur on
3) I'm running a GeForce
4) My renders were not all that much worse than some videos
5) I didn't optimize a thing, and lastly
6) The polycounts of my frame are actually quite high, considering.

So something just wasn't adding up -- most likely Radiosity is the missing variable -- that or Pixar Renderman is slow as heck.

(Thanks for the help, but I wasn't actually complaining about my render times -- I was wondering why the horror stories, on better computers, were so so much longer.)

And I didn't get a chance to try your particles solution yet -- been bogged down with a major essay in one of my classes.