In addition to Lyle's comments, I'd like to point that high speed is not one of the highlights of the Animator, and there are good reasons for this
With the Animator you are creating a movie with several frames / second, each frame is a picture, so...
Sometimes, 6 or 12 hours are meaningless for the Animator.
I have a "heavy duty" computer, I use an ATI videocard (as Lyle stated above, it runs with full acceleration). Last year I developed a video of the grand opening of a shopping center. These are some images
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial2.html
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial5.html
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial15.html
I divided the building in 5 segments and I created the movies by segment. Each segment (inserted in a work space of 800 x 800 ft, no topography) the size of the Punch files are between 5 to 8 Mb. It took more or less 15 to 20 hours to render (each segment) with good quality, large video size and 15 frames per second. Of course, notice the moldings, POBs, columns, etc.
I plan to do a "public movie session" with this work as soon as possible
In the meantime, check this sample elaborated with the Animator. Notice that this movie was edited after Punch, to add music. As it is a big file, depending of your connection, it may take few minutes to load
http://www.punchhelpers.com/avitest.html
Patricia