So you’re saying that merely switching to Filmic increases the realism in Cycles? We can agree to disagree on that one!
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I didn’t suggest Cycles shouldn’t be developed further (hence why I said “doesn’t CURRENTLY hit the spot”) - but if Cycles isn’t doing it for you at the moment - it’s not like there aren’t other options out there.
I’m merely suggesting using one of the many options you yourself have suggested give better results whilst Cycles continues to be improved. If Cycles eventually gives the level of realism you crave (and that you imply is currently unachievable) - then you can happily switch back at that point.
Redshift and Octane actually do a bit of changes here, like expand to list more inputs etc. Especially if its just options. However I think the UI should simple be changed to have more possibilities.
What?? Maybe I’m not expressing myself clearly. No - I’m saying other renderengines use different tonemapping techniques than filmic which results in vastly different look and feel of the renderings. If you’d compare the linear renderings without tonemapping of different renderengines, the differences would probably decrease.
Yes - Renderman even had a System for that in it’s Blender Integration. The Node Editor UI will likely get many quality of life changes in the following years anyway with all the everything-nodes fuzz. Well - if you have ever had the displeasure to work with Max’s Slate Material Editor, there you have an example of how to not do Nodes UI. Makes me pull out my hair regularily.
For the record, I do think Cycles needs to get better as far as image quality
Huh? I’ve found that totally opposite. Cycles have great quality, always. Just use enough samples and rendering converges to near perfection. As good as to expect using CGI.
However, there are differences how smart those rendering engines are, to get similar result less samples or caching samples in animations. So there may be difference in speed, and more speed makes possible to use more samples.
Some engines may scale better to complex scenes so there may be limitations in memory but the path tracing in cycles gives great results.
There are tons of incredibly talented artists using Blender on a daily basis, but I have yet to see a single Cycles render that matches the physical realism of, say Corona for architectural visualization.
If we don’t count rendertime, usually most visible weakness you can found on cycles rendering is in colors. sRGB color space and filmic view are not good. Using ACES workflow, calculating lights and some materials if possible using ACEScg colorspace will improve quality a lot.
But there is problem in computer graphics ecosystems: Practically ALL assets and textures in world are made to sRGB so that makes every CGI shot to look dull in colors compared to real camera. While I’m using Blender 2.92, only way to do little workaround is to calculate lightsources in ACEScg gamut and using ACES workflow.
So this is not problem in Cycles, problem is that every asset made past decades need to be textured again.
Luckily the devs agree and are constantly working to improve it 
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You seem to be ignoring the cases where the user isn’t necessarily trying to reproduce a real world material. These nodes are useful because they offer a lot more control over the end result. It would be a huge mistake to get rid of them.
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Sounds like the devs agree if they’re working to improve it. 
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We disagree. I have yet to see a single render done in Cycles which rivals the realism that I see on a daily basis from other render engines…unless we’re talking about NPR in which case I do think Cycles is quite good. I’m sure some of it is subjective…then again I have to wonder how strong the fanboy factor blinds some people to the shortcomings of their favorite DCC.
Regardless…Blender’s pros outweigh the cons for my personal needs so I’m not trying to crap all over it. Just pointing out that there are shortcomings which I hope will eventually be addressed (perhaps by shaders like MatX).
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Is there anyway “realism” can be less subjective and more objective?
I’m for more realism too, but I’m not sure what you are actually talking about when you say it.
Can you describe what is missing? We can’t just file a bug report that cycles “isn’t realistic enough”, and if we can’t describe the issue, it’s gonna be real tough to solve it.
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I don’t know if I can quantify it in words that a developer would be able to understand – but I have a nagging suspicion that Brecht Van Lommel has a good idea of the why’s.
It’s a bit like asking why does the ARRI Alexa look more cinematic than the Sony A7r? It’s difficult to quantify it in words, but 9 out of 10 Cinematographers instinctively understand that the Alexa’s image simply looks better.
I do think that comparing render engines to camera sensors is actually a good analogy. The math/science is the same, and yet the differences between them are palpable.
I just think it’s important as technical artists to use technical language to describe our art.
Leave the handwavyness to the theoretical physicists and the interpretive dancers.
A strong opinion with nothing to back it up is worth about as much as any other opinion, I guess.
Sorry to beat that horse again, but this again sounds like the tonemapping is the problem for you - have you looked into this thread? Troy Sabotka is currently developing a successor called AGX that could maybe solve some of the problems old filmic had.
I have yet to see a single render done in Cycles which rivals the realism that I see on a daily basis from other render engines…
Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myg-VbapLno
This isn’t quality comparison, it is speed comparison but it shows that image quality is same level as others and the author explains well why this is difficult to measure. You really need to measure noise and speed, interesting speed optimizations and investigate features and rendering accuracy.
LuxCoreRender is bit more accurate, while it using spectral rendering. It can be approximated using RGB, especially when using ACEScg gamut but LuxCoreRender is more accurate than Cycles or Corona.
As far as I know, V-Ray is has interesting global illumination optimization that lose accuracy to get more speed.
It should be known that every image can be make better by increasing contrast so easily major differences are caused by tone mapping and color correction, not the rendering engine.
Maybe you can describe more technically what is wrong in cycles? Comparing different works doesn’t measure well because there may be more skilled artist using different engine.
There are minor differences but enough samples, unbiased path tracers give similar results.
It’s a bit like asking why does the ARRI Alexa look more cinematic than the Sony A7r?
As far as I know, Sony A7r shoot 8-bit videoformats, less bit rate, sensor is slower, so there are major technical differences.
Modern rendering engines can render to 32-bit OpenEXR so there is no dynamic range issue so please be more accurate what is lacking in cycles.
Sorry to beat that horse again, but this again sounds like the tonemapping is the problem for you
I recommend to switch ACES workflow. I manually set it up to Blender 2.92
There is downside that Cycles sky textures are sRGB gamut, so when I render any sky, I render it to HDR OpenEXR and import it to ACEScg. I just calculate manually light sources in ACEScg.
Nah - tried it and I personally prefer filmic over ACES. Just @Midphase probably doesn’t.
I render to Filmic Log and do colorgrading in Fusion/Resolve → Filmic sRGB.
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All I did was scroll the gallery for 2 minutes:
Lots of links
In mountains
Romelu Lukaku - Inter 20/21
Botanical Retreat
Åland Islands House - CGI
Millbeck Farm - The Lake District
Human Progress
Houseplants study
Another Arch Viz scene
Entrance Hall
Lego Star Wars X-Wing
Keychron K2 v2 Keyboard
3rd May Avenue Office Park
is a bit of an overstatement.
I highly advise against it, unless you’re working in a pipeline where it’s demanded from third parties. It doesn’t solve anything. A better transform is in development, but already usable. Better to invest time in learning professional color grading and photo editing.
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Professional color grading and photo editing is based on Aces, is it not?
By professional, i mean “Fits into pipelines of what’s typically used by companies”.
You can use aces and be very very bad at color grading, the two have not much to do with each other. You can PM me if you wanna know more, I don’t wanna derail the thread.
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