I have tried out the latest Indigo in 2 days. Let the images do the talking, the first one was completed in 26 seconds using Blender Internal, the second one was the result after 10 hours and a half using Indigo :mad:, I must say that unbiased renderer didn’t even complete my scene, let alone the realism.
I forgot to mention I used default settings in Blendigo, there must be something wrong here, do I have to pay special attention to anything to get the best result out of Indigo.
You don’t have to do anything special, you just have to wait.
That is the problem with unbiased rendering. Technology is just now catching up. What with the GPU based unbiased renders coming out. Maybe in a year or two they will be up to speed.
That is kind of why I set Lux aside for now. The SmallGPULux is out and is faster but it still is slower than the internal render system. Unless you absolutely need the physically accurate rendering I would suggest you simply fake it and get on with your life.
Thank you, Atom but… I don’t really satisfy, that result doesn’t worth 10 hours, I just want to see how realistic Indigo can make
I wonder if it is a materials problem. I have not used Indigo but I know that some external renderers do not understand all of the materials settings in Blender, for example procedural textures, color gradients etc. You may have to modify the materials in the renderer exporter or the renderer itself.
There should be a ‘draft quality’ setting on the renderer that you can use to get a quicker image. This will let you sort out such issues before using the slower but high quality settings.
I wonder if it is a materials problem. I have not used Indigo but I know that some external renderers do not understand all of the materials settings in Blender, for example procedural textures, color gradients etc. You may have to modify the materials in the renderer exporter or the renderer itself.
There should be a ‘draft quality’ setting on the renderer that you can use to get a quicker image. This will let you sort out such issues before using the slower but high quality settings.
Wow Indigo doesn’t support normal map and procedural texture, that’s the problem 
Try Yafaray. The latest version in beta (0.1.2) does support tangent normal maps and is quite easy to set up.
Also, make sure you try out the native renderer in Blender 2.53 with Color Management enabled. It is faster than 2.49 and for my project (which does not have complex lighting or reflective/refractive challenges), produces results that are nearly as good as Yafaray.
By the way, I have been puzzled as to why the users of the more light-accurate renderers such as Indigo, Luxrender and Yafaray 0.1.1 do not seem to be concerned by the lack of normal mapping support. I have concluded that normal mapping is more of a low-poly gaming/animation technique. Artists trying to achieve a more photoreal look who use the non-biased renders are not so concerned with poly count and prefer to have more realistic displaced geometry.