I'm so glad to hear that it works. I didn't change anything in the compile process. The only difference this time is that the exe wasn't packed by upx.

I agree with you 100%. Blender shouldn't have to recalculate the normals before rendering. But it does, and I guess the devs have their reasons, or maybe it's just old leftover code.

I'll do more testing (and hope other MoI users will too) to find out if my code is bug free. Then I can submit a patch when 2.5 becomes stable. But since it changes they way Blender works, I doubt it will be accepted.

Have you tried my 2.5 build?