There are several variables that come into play when we talk about human time.
- Viewport performance: yes, this is a super important one, and we have to limitations right now that seem to be very hard to overcome, GPU support, while we have it the update time is so big that it’s not worth it, and even with CPU, reaction time when moving lights, cameras, modifying materials, distribution/particle systems are quite slow compared with cycles, but it’s not a LuxCore thing, I think it’s a Blender limitation due to the Blender API, that’s why I think Hydra would be the only ultimate solution, so the integration is a proper native one.
- Available Libraries: this is another human time problem, since there is no full support for Cycles materials, it takes a lot of time to adjust and convert materials to the native LuxCore system, which is very good, and I like it a lot, but when we have to go at high speed, this is a problem because it takes a lot of time to convert every model the client wants to try, it’s a pity, but it is what it is.
Once more Hydra could be a solution, since Hydra + Matwrial-X support would give a native / uniform shading system that could work along different engines and will allow us to avoid conversions and be up to speed.
But first Blender should have native Hydra support, then we may start thinking about this as a possible solution