Can a blend that originally was setup to render in Cycles be rendered in Blender Render? When I isolate the flower and select Cycles Render it renders but nothing happens when I try Blender Render. The blend is attached.
emirage_white_lotus_original.blend (616 KB)
The reason is simple, the material systems for Cycles and BI are completely different, and thus completely incompatible with each other.
BI’s node system for example is more in the vein of a material mixer with options for further material editing, much of BI’s material options lie within a legacy material interface where you have sliders for specularity, hardness, ect…
So I take it the answer is no. Is there then anyway to convert an object built for Cycles to an object that can be rendered in Blender Render?
Sure you can.
The material systems are different. Once you switch to Blender Internal you will need to select each mesh with a material and turn OFF the material node. This will drop the materials back into the Blender Render material system. Re-pick the colors for each material and you are good to go.
Thanks Atom. Turn off the material node. Hmmmm…now how do I do that?
… in the big-picture of things, though, these two animation systems are “apples vs. oranges” in their fundamental approach to the task. They simply deal with the problem of “rendering things” in a very different way.
Here is where Blender’s “library linking” capabilities can help you a lot. Set up various files of “assets,” particularly the meshes and their locations in 3D space. Put your camera-objects in there, too, so that you can guarantee that the various shots will be taken from the same points-of-view and lens settings. This allows you to link-to what is common between the various files. But then, from that point forward, set up individual .blend files that each contain what is uniquely different about “this approach” versus “that one.” If you do this very carefully, the two can be combined for a synergistic effect in the compositor. (It’s a three-step process: "BI renders, “Cycles renders,” “Composite the files thus-made.”)
