An argument for re-introducing Blender Internal in version 2.81 (or, 2.80 final)

(Martynas Žiemys) #101

Yes, that is a really good point. I believe there are many cases where Cycles can be used instead of BI. It can be a great tool for creating non-photo-realistic images. I always get away with Cycles for my own needs even if I need something that is far from photo realism.

I should have said ‘this might not be a well received recommendation’ instead of ‘might not be a good recommendation’ :smiley: It actually makes more sense to me to recommend Cycles to replace BI than YafaRay. No need to install anything.

(Ivagr) #102

BI still has one advantage . It’s only renderer in Blender able to bake proper normal maps for geometry with edited vertex normals. Cycles seems totally ignores whatever you do with vertex normals.
Have just checked it again in 2.8 with its new very cool “Weighted Normals” modifier. Cycles still bakes it wrong

(captainkirk) #103

I also feel like adding that in my current tests in trying to get the best NPR results, I’ve switched from EEVEE to Cycles and it’s allowed me to get the closest I’ve been to a genuine traditional animated look, and it would not have been possible in BI. I’m not ready to share results yet but I think it will be of interest to the NPR crowd when I’m done.

(Martynas Žiemys) #104

Maybe now that there is more of a reason to fix it in Cycles, it has a better chance of being fixed.

(Ivagr) #105

My guess nobody cares because people mostly use free Xnormal to bake anything games related. Blender also misses anti-aliasing in bakers. It’s one more odd omission. Still I’d love to have it all in one package. Working properly with cool Textools addon

(Martynas Žiemys) #106

Have you seen any of the development process of 2.80?! It seems there is a whole bunch of people who care about a lot of stuff in Blender. It’s just that there is so much of everything. If you ever start to think people developing Blender don’t care, just google ‘What’s new in Maya 2019’ that will give you some interesting context… :smiley:

(Ivagr) #107

I understand. I mean that was not something critical and one could just use Xnormal for baking. So maybe just didn’t worth to be cared about.

But now with a new super cool bevel shader baking feature it’s imo kind of important to sort all of the other baking glitches.
Surprisingly Blender did baked faked bevels better then any other 3d package I tried. Better than Modo for sure. And in 3d max it’s hardly working at all (with 3d part solution)

But something have changed recently and for some uncertain reason I couldn’t get same seamless normal map shading appearance along what supposed to be beveled edge on low poly target model any more.

(sundialsvc4) #108

I would chime in here and remind the crowd that I never suggested that “Cycles/Eevee/etc could not do the same thing better.” It unquestionably can. But, the BI renderer is still perfectly legitimate, and there are still a helluva lot of Blender projects which were painstakingly built – and then, sold – which use it. Although it is no longer “the state of the art” given the enormous advantages in (especially) GPU technology which have occurred over the years, that also is not the point. “Ever since the NaN days,” BI was there, and I argue that there is still a business need to continue to have access to it … alongside other alternatives.

And also, if I may say (subjectively) … “it is still a damn good engine,” and different from all the others. It’s still an asset to the Blender system. No, it doesn’t work like the others do, but it sure-as-hell works!

I’m perfectly happy that “its role and its positioning within the product may change.” Time marches on. But, don’t remove the technical capability to fire-up “Blender latest,” select this render-engine, and soon produce exactly the same image that “Blender” could produce in all of its past. If you still need it, or if you still simply want it, you should have it at your fingertips.

Now that the development team has accomplished the very-messy work of excising it from the core of the product, now they can – if they will – repackage it and bring it back, better than ever it was before.

(oblio) #109

There is no business case. Move on.

(Harley) #110

You have said that there is a “business need” and a “business case” for leaving it in, but nothing you have mentioned supports that idea. Do you think the Blender Institute or Foundation will somehow get more income if this old tech is brought back? Lowered expenses? More volunteers? I really can’t guess what you mean when you say that…

Princess_Bride_That_Word

(Peetie) #111

We all know that most likely BI is not coming back. Why putting so much energy in it (see how active this thread is). Why not put our energy in support of what is going on in reality?

(Ace Dragon) #112

There’s nothing else to discuss at this point.

All I can say is that there is a need tor realize just how much work a decoupled BI with clean code would require, and that the same amount of man-hours can be used to produce dramatic improvements for both Cycles and Eevee (to the point where no one even cares about BI).

Repeating the same points over and over again in the hopes everyone agrees the next time will more likely lead to a locked thread than BI being brought back.

(paulhart2) #113

I would welcome a ‘preset’ for us less adept, to make all of the settings for BI like speed. 'Cause, I will not easily remember the fine instructions on how to speed up Blender Cycles. Useful info.

(sozap) #114

Indeed, one great advantage of BI I see was the possibility to apply color filter to shaders. Similar to what Eevee does with Shader to RGB node.
Cycles can handle heavy scenes (geometry + textures) in this simplified mode as you describe.
Anyway, I think we should move along and adapt to the changes rather than being in the “in some ways it was better before” state of mind.

(sozap) #115

I don’t think it’s as simple as that, given all the work that was involved in BI I’m sure all options were studied before removing it.

It’s not the first time some stuff break in blender, from memory the animation system was rewritten twice ( with elephant dream and 2.5) and some rig were broken then. The particles system was also rewritten from scratch once and you couldn’t get the same result as with previous version. Some feature disappear from time to time too , like the awesome 2.49 ‘time offset’ which many projects of mine (including commercial ones) were heavily based on.
I’m sure many commercial projects based on BI can have a upgrade of the render style with cycles or eevee. Also it’s known from many years that at some point cycles would be the default render, and BI abandoned.

Compatibility breakage are always sad, but resources aren’t unlimited and many areas of blender needs improvements. I think a more constructive discussion could be around which features from BI are lacking in both cycles and eevee.
Like tension maps, there is an addon but having it built-in by default would be awesome.
Maybe having some phong shaders and old school specularity in eevee could be done, would that be really interesting to have , why ?

(Jason van Gumster) #116

In fairness, @sundialsvc4 has shown a business case for continuing to use Blender Internal on some of his own commercial projects. However, he has not yet presented a compelling business case for the Blender Institute or Foundation. That would require showing that maintaining Blender Internal would somehow financially benefit those organizations.

So, there is a business need. Just not for the business that matters in this case.

(Romanji) #117

It has been said in this thread and i say it again. There is no case for reintroducing BI into 2.8 because BI is still in 2.7 and will stay there.
The inconvenience of having to export your scene into a different program (from 2.8 to 2.7) to create shaders and materials there is a common workflow in 3D.
I build my stuff in Blender and export to UE4 where i have to build my shading and lighting.
In feature films, stuff will not get rendered in Maya anymore, it goes into Katana or Clarisse for look-dev and rendering.
People render in Keyshot, Marmorset, Octane standalone etc.
Its totally normal.
To suggest that the BF puts the manpower in to keep an outdated Renderer in the program just to circumvent this inconvenience is not economic.

(Nitram_2000) #118

“I think a more constructive discussion could be around which features from BI are lacking in both cycles and eevee.”

This right here.

(captainkirk) #119

The biggest missing thing from BI is the baking. It was just never as good in Cycles, and the fact that it bakes to whatever image texture node is selected never made sense. I think there needs to be an option to select the target image in the baking panel.

(Ace Dragon) #120

I do recall that the original version of Cycles baking was actually pretty decent. Unfortunately though, one of the main developers disagreed with the way it was implemented because it didn’t fit neatly from a “design” perspective (which apparently always has to come before usability with no exceptions).

It’s not the first time such a thing happened unfortunately.