I'm not really trying to contradict you, so much as I'm a little humored by some of your suggestions, not because they are naive, but because they are common.

I'm not really trying to contradict you, so much as I'm a little humored by some of your suggestions, not because they are naive, but because they are common. > Things like, progressive enhancement rendering This is a very common option in a huge number of renderers. Particularly physically-based renderers It particularly useful when you want interactive feedback, less so for 'final' renders. > Massively parallelized rendering pipelines. Rendering is one of the original problems that generally fit into the "embarrassingly parallel" category, hence why render farms are even a things. There are very many existing offline renderers that take great advantage of GPU computation. Paired with progressive enhancement, certain renderers use this particularly well for interactive editing. But it's also used in very many a render farm. > Static scene analysis/dynamic compositing ... let the computer algorithmically break down a scene and maximize rendering speed This has been done since likely the day rendering was invented (not actually). The artist only thinks about layering and composting when the artist wants specific composting control in post. And there is no way you could do that as an automated process, just as you can't do the rest of the art as an automated process. > Perhaps it will eventually be determined to not be cost effective What won't be cost effective? Those techniques? They already are! Or cloud-computing for offline rendering? It already is as well! Some of the first clouds as a service were and are put to great use for offline rendering from the very start. And a 'render farm' is really just a 'private cloud' for rendering. > after being relatively unchanged for the past 20. This is confusing to me. Rendering is a field with one of the most progress every year. You only have to go to Siggraph once to see that as self-evident. Anyways, I'd love to talk more or answer any other questions you have. Rendering has been a passion of mine for over half my life. And anything that has the ability to transform how we do things is very interesting. Just as Clara.io very much is.