I haven’t read anything specific about the system requirements to use Cycles, and have not yet bothered to download and try it; I haven’t been blending a whole lot of recent, and know that Cycles is still in early development, alpha even (?), and don’t feel up to testing.
So! My system is pretty old. Athlon XP 1800+ (yes, single core :eek: )with 1gig RAM and a Radeon x700 256meg video card. I’m pretty sure I can’t use GPU rendering at all. Is it worth it for me to try Cycles?
Thanks 
It’s always worth to try cycles.
If you can render with BI, you can render with cycles aswell.
only Chuck Norris can use cycles.
GPU rendering is an optional feature of Cycles. You can use it but I think you know it will be quite slow.
Maybe you could sell your sytsem to a museum and get a new one. Not offensive 
LOLz re: sell my system to a museum … I suppose then I should also sell my dual P200 with 400Megs ram and an 8meg video card?
In my mind, even that old dual P200 used to be good enough to make movies. It still is, thusly, just a LOT slower than modern machines. I DO very much want to put together a modern system; at least 4 cores, at least 6 gigs RAM, a nice 1/2 gig video card … ahhhhhhhhh to dream. someday, someday.
I’ll download blender with Cycles and check it out. How’s the general stability??
I was joking
Stability of cycles is strange. Sometimes it crashes every 5 minutes, sometimes it runs for 2h without crash. My advice: save before every render, switch to rendered in viewport and even bevor moving an object to another layer
Cycles is alpha (or early beta?) but it is fun to try out thinks and play with material nodes .
I only encountered Cycles to crash a few times.
I find it very very stable for its age.
Only way to find out is to download and try it… :rolleyes: I can’t really use GPU rendering that much either, even if my card supports opencl…
I tried Cycles recently on a system pretty similar to yours (not sure the exact specs but pretty close) and it worked but crashed regularly. Basically just adding an object and then trying to render would cause it to crash. Or even just deleting an object. Pretty much anything caused it to crash.
I have a much better system with OpenCL that i use mainly that runs cycles great. I would suggest trying it but you would be better off working on getting a new system if you want the full benefit of Cycles =-)
Dont touch cycles or it will explode!
No.
Actually, it is not Chuck Norris using Cycles. It is Cycles using Chuck Norris as one of its components.
Nonsense, but it does crash on occasion…then again a system like that…idk…
Actually, it is not Chuck Norris using Cycles. It is Cycles using Chuck Norris as one of its components.
Considering that cycles uses brute force pathtracing, that’s probably pretty close.
With those system specs, cycles will probably just cause you frustration, but if you want to give it a go, you certainly can.
Nope, I cannot use Cycles. Rendering in viewport or F12 crashes right out. Also, I’m rather disappointed to see that Cycles uses the ‘new school’ material methods. I like and am used to the ‘old school’ method, where the artist has individual control over diffuse, specular, transparent, translucent, et al. I understand and appreciate the use of the ‘new school’ method, but disagree that either (or any) method is “better” than any other. The new method, sure, it makes photorealism easier. BUT, the old method gives the artist way more freedom to create materials exactly as desired, realistic or not. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to learn the new school sometime. AND keep around older (current) versions of Blender so I can keep my beloved old school methods, which I’ve learned to use over the last 15 years.
Question, can the new physically based methods do negative lights? Ramp shaded specular or diffuse? etc etc …
EDIT: Ok, to be fair I only tried one build with Cycles, and it included Cuda and OpenCL. Also, it was built under Win 7, and I use XP home SP3. Any suggestions on which build would be best for me to give a go-round?
For real it did! It was most likely because of the hardware or maybe the version I got off graphicall at the time.
I’ve now tried four builds, and all of them crashed on render. Oh well.
there is a major regression in memory usage or something.
Basic “monkeyhead” scenes work fine for me, but anything a bit more complex crashes instantly…
A shame because a few months ago I did a couple of gigs for clients where cycles was my renderer of choice…
All those scenes work in older builds but crash instantly on current versions (I compile my own so have the latest fixes)
Strangely there’s a crash anytime I click on the timeline.
It’s a shame because I really wanted to see if I get better performance with the new transparency code.
only Chuck Norris can use cycles.
yeah i luv it:D
My turn now.
Do you like cycles? Do you think it’s a physically correct GI renderer? Have you seen a good cycles render? Something that you really liked?
I find all these cycles images a bit “dead”, cast shadows tent to be wrong, GI is for the birds sometimes. Using extreme setting and latest builds of course. These may be alpha builds but they already ‘telling’ me that I’ll never like this render engine.
Just saying, I prefer the BPR zb renders. And searching to buy a good render engine, like octane, vray, or anything else.
Chuck Norris LOL, I admit that I love this nodes system, my concern is on what I get from this renderer. What ridiculous and funny lights are these? A dramatic lighting, haven’t seen on these test renders. So far. Practically is impossible to setup such lighting.
Physically correct renderer my…
I spent 2-3 hours on sculpting and texturing and some days for testing and setting up cycles. Lot of crashes and poor results.