Quote Originally Posted by deeperblue View Post
Well... CGI rendering is actually quite different from the graphics cards rendering pipeline.
Take a look at this:
http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/Ff569022...s,VS.85%29.png
From Input Assembler until after the Geometry Shader everything is done resolution independent! (as somebody mentioned assuming same aspect ratio) The Rasterizer and Pixel Shader are then operating on the actual pixel level of the current rendering target.
Nope. In CGI effects are calculated resolution independent as well, but then to display them, it takes more time at higher resolution than lower one. Displacement is the best example for this, it is done usually with physical scale in mind (the amount the model is tessellated (1 polygon every 1 mm or 3 mm or 5etc..) determines how detailed the model will be after the displacement is done). So, even if i render at 640x480 or 1024x768, the displacement is done independently on the model.

But, doing displacement at 1024x768 usually gives linear increases in the time of rendering vs 640x480. That's why a lot of times i avoid using displacement, because it's a resource hog.