It is interesting to observe over the last years (decades?) that software development orients itself more and more on the ‘average’ user. At some point in time all these were specialized complicated and not very accessible tools that you were expected to learn (read the manual for starters).
But now that everyone has a voice thanks to the internet, the reason not to implement things is to not confuse people who in turn would waste every ones time with their questions?
I would wish for 50 knobs, as i am doing this stuff since 20 years… And i am surely not alone.
Edit / Add: I think Unity does a good job of serving both ends of the spectrum
A question from someone who knows nothing about coding or compiling with a patch, would it be possible to make it an addon so only artists who are really committed to using it will install it?
Solution: Don’t accept bug reports. Do not include it in “Experimental” feature set, but do include it in an “Unsupported” feature set. Basically a summation of experimental and itself. Just tell people bug reports are not accepted if they have selected the “Unsupported” feature set.
Alternatively: You could also have a “Still Image” feature set down the road for things that do not work well between multiple frames. Not everyone is using cycles for animation.
Short answer is probably not. The add-ons are written in Python, while Cycles is C++. While you can create bridges between C++ and Python, it will likely not make sense because the change may affect a core part of Cycles, and Python is known to not be a runtime fast language. You don’t want to see your renders become 10x slower to add support for this.
However, if you want to add it, feel free to compile with the patch. Just don’t expect much support from the Cycles team.
Also, as a developer that works closely with artists in a studio, I know how it can seem like the dev team is not adding features because of arbitrary reasons. Usually the reasons are a lack of time and resources, or adding the feature will make things worse. We don’t like making things worse. Either way, have some trust in the team. You have some miracle workers doing magic.
So you guys will not Include a very usefull feature for many users because some people don’t know how to use it, what are the limitations and you will get bug reports? This is a very lazy excuse.
Well, no one said that it will magically work for every scene there is but it works wonders for some scenes so therefore i think it worthwhile adding. It IS an experimental feature, no? For what is that experimental option in cycles if not for something like that? It works for alot of people
you dont know why RedShift became so popular among small studio & freelancer ? it’s easy to use, it’s super fast, and it’s beautiful, and when you set your GI to Irradiance cache, you can force ‘brute force’ to certain object if you need to, as simply as that. idk why you developers wants cycles to be unbiased, having some biased option would hurt no one, specially when the tool are already developed, you should let the artists decide what does & doesn’t work for them.
Christopher Nichols from chaos group here says that clamping makes a renderer biased
anyway, dont take my word to the first degree, you have a better perspective on all of this ^^
Hi lukas, I think this issue can be solved by making it a feature that isn’t exposed in blender’s UI at all by default (not even as an option under experimental features). In order to see it in the UI, we could have to launch blender with a command line argument in the same way we do for the debugging options.
That solution should be sufficiently technical enough to keep novices from using it, while allowing the more technical users to enjoy its benefits without having to compile a custom version of blender. That should be enough to keep the folks here from complaining about not having it.
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Regnas
(• I don't speak English "by default", so... )
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yes, good solution… or python set property command… or hidden string render parameter like in mentalray. please, please Lukas, add this to master. Comercial works need fast responses and fast renders.
Most of my work is still images.
Most of my animations are heavily stylized so physical correctness is not an issue.
As far as I tested this feature back in the days it was useful.
Although Cycles is physically correct people use all kind of hacks to get good results with optimal speed. (Clamping, Simplify, AO etc).
I think that biased solutions do have a place in blender.
On the other hand I’m not a fan of sacrificing software features in the name of user-friendliness. Software is a tool and it’s value must be based on it’s capabilities both for professionals and beginners.
It’s not really that they want Cycles unbiased. In fact, Cycles has many options that introduce bias. What the devs want is to keep Cycles temporally coherent. You see, it’s designed primarily for animation, and so temporal artifacts or inconsistencies of any kind would be very problematic.
Is there a guide on installing and compiling with a patch? Like I said I know nothing about coding and everything I’ve seen so far seems to be geared towards people who have greater understanding of it than me.
Good idea! It could also be an addon - as @captainkirk wrote - that exposes UI properties otherwise hidden.
Anyway, devs rock, i trust every word you guys write
