[Radiance-general] radiance speed question

[Bob Coyne]

Hi,

I'm looking for a renderer to produce still images of scenes
of polygonal data.  I want the beautiful pictures and type of
effects achieved by raytracing and radiosity.  However, I'm
not concerned with absolute accuracy and fidelity to reality
which seems to be Radiance's strength.

Given the above, would using Radiance be overkill?  And
would I be paying a large penalty in performance (and complexity
of specification) to get the kind of accuracy I don't need.
Would I be better off with Povray or Mental Ray or some
other renderer?

Also, does anyone have some examples of final images along with
how long they took to render, polygon count, number of lights, image
resolution, cpu type/speed, and any other parameters that have a major
impact on speed/quality.  That might help me get an idea of whether it's
well suited to what I need.

Thanks,
Bob