Here’s something I made tonight using the recursive envmapping feature in Blender v2.28c using 2 levels of recursion and two lamps (one red, one blue, standard settings):
Envmaps resolutions were set to 350 for the smaller heads and 600 for the center large one. Took a while to render, but the results look promising I think 
RobertT
good job man!
no need of yafray now 
Thanks X-Warrior! I never really got around to messing with Yafray with more than a few simple models. I still plan to some day, but these recursive envmaps, along with other things like rendertime radiosity, should inspire new interest and faith in Blender’s increasingly powerful native rendering capabilities 
RobertT
Wow thats great envmapping. I use envmapping often, and these new levels will be very useful.
Thanks Robertt,
Looks very nice! Wouldnt doubt that your render times were significantly shorter than those of an equal Yafray render.
I am a strong supporter of Yafray, but also a strong supporter of Blenders internal renderer.
Nice work!
dante
Thanks, dante. The render times were definitely a LOT shorter than my several simple attempts with Yafray, in which I tried not very high poly models/scenes. “Society” had about (due to mesh subdivision) 800,000 vertices, so I guess that probably would have taken a very long time in Yafray. Blender’s total render time for this (including the envmapping process) was about 10 minutes on my 2.4ghz XP system
RobertT
I just heard of envmapping. It is a nice feature to have. Nice work.
Here’s a second version with more reflections. I should up the envmap resolution on the outer rings added to the scene, but the additional reflections everywhere else seem to make the scene a little more interesting, especially the symmetrical reflections around the eyes on the heads (which have no eyes) :o 8)
Having fun…
Robert
I’ve always used blenders renderer, I love it!
Great work man…better env maps are one of a few things I’ve been wanting…I’m STILL waiting for real glows and built in focal blur though…and textured radiosity…sooo close with the last release…
realy nice!!! urmmm… how much time it took to render it?
Thanks, @ner. The first picture took around 10 minutes, and the second one was about 15 minutes. I notice the envmap pixel dimensions can go even higher now than ever, so better looking reflections yet can be created. Great new feature with lots of potential.
RobertT
wow thoughs are some tight effects
Here’s the third and final one from this envmap test:
This one took the longest to render, about 16 minutes. More realistic reflections in the background seemed to compete with the foreground a little too much, so instead of leaving it like that I duplicated the outer rim envmaps onto two separate texture channels for each rim and inverted the x/y/z’s on those channels to build up reflections for a different kind of whirling reflection effect.
RobertT
Very nice! It’s very strange but stylish. Nice work.
Thanks, three-dee I guess a lot of my graphics (and music) kind of falls into that category
I must say I’m happy with these “Blender rendered” images. I appreciate the fact that Blender offers you so much power and flexibility in one program.
Well, I finally got around to seeing what Yafray would do with this scene. It was nearly hour into the render and was nowhere near the 50% completed mark on the “first render pass” status bar in the console window. It was more like around 30%. I terminated that with CTRL C.
In the third image there are nearly a million vertices, so that’s probably a big reason why this would take long to render in any raytracing renderer. I’ll try it again some day on this scene when I have more time, povray too maybe. I used Extractor as the exporter to Yafray using just E’s standard settings. Extractor is a very nice front end for Yafray. I’ll definitely be playing with it some more.
RobertT
