I’ve been seeing a lot of chat about importing Blender scenes into external renderers, like Yafray, that can do things like raytrace shadows, etc. Is it worth the extra effort? Anybody know of an example of a side-by-side comparison of a scene rendered in Blender and some other app, so I can see the difference?
Hi!
For 95% of all real-life scenes you would want to render, Blender’s internal renderer is enough if you know how to use Blender’s lights efficiently.
For things like real realistic refraction, a raytracer could be useful. That’s pretty much the only situation I can imagine where a raytracer makes a noticable difference.
Though, all these things (refraction, reflections, shadows, omni-lamps with shadows, etc.) can be faked quite easily and realistically in Blender’s renderer.
I was working on an page comparing the results obtained by using the various raytracers that one can use with Blender. (I haven’t tried PovRay, yet - jms has a nice script to export to it) It’s still a work in progress.
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/Lab/RayTracers/RayTracers.html
I couldn’t have asked for a better demo! :O) The feeling I got, from another app, was than non-raytraced shadows looked more realistic, so I guess simpler is better. But anything to make a render better. :O) Thanks!
blender’s shadows are pretty good, you can do almost everything with them that you can do with a raytracer.
Reflections are a bigger problem. If its a simple shape like a plane or sphere, blender’s env maps do a perfect job, but for more complicated meshes it can give unsatisfying results.
Glass objects and refraction is where a raytracer is neccessary. Blender cannot make decent glass. No matter how people try, it always looks crap.
Raytracers can also give good lighting effects like colour bleeding and stuff like that, but they can be done in blender. It just takes some effort.
Well if Blender’s shadows are pretty good, and I think they are, who’s is really good?
i would not say, that blender is easier, than a raytracer. i learnd how to use povray at school, so its quite ec for me, to do anythin with glass or metal in there 
atm i try to find out, if lightflow is even better …
lightflow is dead, i thought.
possible … there was no update for more than a year.
but probably it is still one of the most powerfull free renderers.
povray is acctually alive 
- but they didnt really hold the code up to date, i fear.
it is all the time backward raytracing.
there has been another project, zrcube, to do an really strong reaytracer with the pov-input - but its death too … 
qiv, please stop using commas in your posts! they make them very hard to read the way you put them to use
It’s much easier to do shadows in something like YAFRay, I noticed that with too many objects then blender doesn’t seem to want to render shadows…
Use a renderer wisely, to the fullest of its potential. Don’t fight it anymore that you’d try to get a chalk drawing out of a pen. Become the best artist you can. The rest will take care of itself.
blenders renderengine and texture system is good for home use for professional studio quality it lacks many features you need to get real photorealistic results.
just an example skin is not possible in blender to simulate.
for those things rib is the format to go. more work yes but also better results.
that should not mean that blender is bad it is good for its use as far as i know blender is manly a game dev tool or was it. there for its fine.
eicke
Interesting statements!
> blenders renderengine and texture system is good for home use for
> professional studio quality it lacks many features you need to get real
> photorealistic results.
Hmmm. You DO know that various broadcast video has been produced by NeoGeo? (Who were using Blender)
> just an example skin is not possible in blender to simulate.
Interesting. Which exact characteristic(s) of skin are impossible to simulate in Blender?
> that should not mean that blender is bad it is good for its use as far as i > know blender is manly a game dev tool or was it. there for its fine.
I don’t think Blender is primarily a game development tool. After all, it has been developed by a dutch ANIMATION studio. I assume you HAVE seen all the stuff that has been done with Blender (DiditDoneit, Mindfields, etc.) so you can further support your statements
take a look at final flight of osiris.
take a look at the nose holes.
the new skin shaders calculates that the light is not reflected like from an egg shell or metal part but goes into the skin chnages the color because of the blood veins and causes redisch shadows and also add a glow to certain parts of teh skin depending on the viewers angle.
the particle system inside blender is very similar to particle systems used in games for smoke etc. mindfields is a good example for that.
blender has no area light system inside and depending on the geometry the radiosity engine will give you better or worese results.
and i am not saying blender is shit or a toy. i do noty know if you worked with renderman.
i also know companies using carrara 1 for broadcast effects like msnbc.
thats fine but for real photorealism blender has some bottle necks.
but hey its free.
i use it often for illustrative purpose for my metal design beside my multimedia productions.
eicke