You’ve probably heard of the new renderer being developed, Cycles. I’ve always been interested in realism and so this new renderer is really good news for me.
It’s currently in pre-alpha stage (despite what I accidentally say in the video) which means that there are tonnes of bugs and little integration with most functions of Blender, so don’t expect it to work like a charm.
Cycles Test (Click for tank tracks tutorial)
However, it’s perfectly capable of creating something decent. The image on the right is just something I made to test out cycles and find whatever major bugs there might be.*Surprisingly, there are not so many serious bugs that stop you from doing what you want – despite a few crashes every now and then (mostly when playing with nodes too much and testing things you know probably won’t work) Cycles has definitely got a very large future in Blender.
You could think of it as a brother of Luxrender. It has GPU rendering (my favourite feature!) and a similar material system.Be warned though, it takes getting used to and there is very little documentation on it.*But, if you’re like me and you like to play with stuff that technically hasn’t been released yet, then go ahead and download Cycles!
Watch this video to find out how to use some of the key features of Cycles including materials, lighting and camera effects.
Tutorial:
More on Cycles:
Cycles Announced
Cycles FAQ
Interesting Tests
Video Demonstration by Mike Pan
PS: I’m still sick, so I’m really sorry if my voice annoys you in the video. Once I get better I’ll record this one