Here is my problem, i like the look of cycles, but the noise problem and the fact that it would take my laptop a year to render 5 min animation means i have to use BI.
After reading some post, i realised that you could get bi out of cycles.
By using the massive editor addon you could: turn off all diffuse on objects,
then turn off world diffuse
set your lights to hemi
set to direct light sample
and also use branched path
and you get noise less BI speed renders at 10 samples, but also more bi looking. So getting to the point should i now dump bi for good? Will a more complex scene still take to long or bring out problems i cant forsee? Reflection are noisey still but can soften on composite. Is using hemi only lights a realy bad idea just so you can use cycles, almost all tutes on youtube are cycles based.
Any thoughts or knowledge would be helpful, since i dont want to start an animation and regret it. My last animation took weeks to render in bi.
Not sure if you’re workflow is correct, as the last I heard Cycles doesn’t support the ‘hemi’ light. Are you using raytracing in BI? I’ve heard that turning that off and learning how to use BI in pure scanline mode (i.e. shadow buffers and environment mapping) is still a pretty fast way to render…
Well ive just turned too cycles mode pressed on a lamp and one of the option tabs says hemi, unless im missing something its right there. The real point is that bi is stuck mostly at 2.5. Every body seems to of moved into cycles world leaving me behind in respect to tutorials and object compatibility and so on. So i was wondering if my strategy mentioned above to get cycles to render almost as quick as bi a valid one, since there people with a lot more knowlege than me may be able to save me a lot of experimental time trying to figure this out.
If you look in properties in the lamp tab for hemi lamps you will see it says, ‘not supported, interpreted as sun lamp.’
If you make something good with BI and everyone else uses Cycles, what does it matter? interest in NPR is actually quite high and that means BI. Render methods come and go, but basic 3D skills are long lasting…
@Koumis I’m going to try and choose my words very carefully here. Or, your thread will end up being a full blown Cycles - BI tirade on both side. Since you mentioned animation I will base any opinions on that.
However, you’ve told us nothing about your scenes. Are they in the open or in a enclosed space. Do you need caustics. Is the poly count low enough where you can stay in your GPU assuming you have CUDA. When attempting an animation all of this comes into play. I personally have a low end Nvidia card and with the exception of some ‘In the open scenes’ I use BI or YafaRay.
The link below is to a completely enclosed scene with 22 area lamps and still counting. On my machine using Cycles for this is out of the question. And, I made a judgment call that YafaRay gives me a nicer look then Blender Internal here. By the way in 720p this shot is taking more then five (5) minutes in render time. So yes animations do take forever. And, also 30 seconds per frame difference is huge. I’m still working hoping to shave twenty seconds off of this scene.
In Blender we have three very capable render engines to use for animating. Cycles, BI and YafaRay. I would suggest getting familiar with all three. Then you can make a objective call relating to any project you might have on your particular machine. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81075043/Linked%20.png
This image has no noise and was rendered at 10 samples, the quality is not good, however the world is moving towards cycles, if i can continue to replicate this noiseless rendered ill continue to use cycles. I may render shadows in bi, and soften reflections with passes.
Well aren’t I the dumb ass since you seem to have made up your mind before even posting the thread. But, what you have here (Poly count) could be animated in old LuxRender on the granddaughters tablet. Regardless best of luck.
