Is it faster?
On the contrary, Luxrender is a fair deal slower than cycles, blender internal, and Yafaray. It has more preset materials and, I hear, a more realistic lighting engine. However, I have seen many cycles renders which are just as good. Just need to know what you are doing.
LuxRender is a spectral, physically-based, open source renderer with several integrators. Whereas in BI or Cycles you have either a rasterization renderer or a RGB path tracer made for animation, respectively, in LuxRender you have a full suite of integrators from direct lighting ray tracer to stochastic progressive photon mapping. It is well suited for many more lighting situations, but is generally considered too slow to be used for any kind of animation without massive computing power. As you will find as you learn more about rendering, there is no “right” or “better” renderer. Each renderer is good at a different thing, and it’s up to the artist to know when and where different techniques are needed.
I don’t use Yafaray because they have not solved the transparent PNG problem that I personally run into. It has been years since I reported the bug and it is still not fixed. Also the last time I used it, on Windows it just crashed while rendering and there was no solution offered other than to use Linux. If you are on Linux then Yafaray may not be a problem. I do not mean to discourage you from trying Yafaray. I am simply reporting my experience.
For the fastest render system just use Blender Internal.
For the slowest render system use Lux.
For the fastest render system just use Blender Internal.
For the slowest render system use Lux.
Thanks Atom (i.e. for CPU rendering).
For speed, use Cycles GPU if you have a CUDA (NVIDIA) card, which I’m sure you know, but for others who don’t.
I guess it really depends on what level of realism you want to sacrifice for speed or vice versa.
Speed is more important to me than true to life realism as I like to do animation, and Cycles CUDA
is the fastest by far.
As m9105826 said,
“LuxRender is a spectral, physically-based, open source renderer with several integrators. Whereas in BI or Cycles you have either a rasterization renderer or a RGB path tracer made for animation, respectively, in LuxRender you have a full suite of integrators from direct lighting ray tracer to stochastic progressive photon mapping. It is well suited for many more lighting situations, but is generally considered too slow to be used for any kind of animation without massive computing power. As you will find as you learn more about rendering, there is no “right” or “better” renderer. Each renderer is good at a different thing, and it’s up to the artist to know when and where different techniques are needed.”
After re-reading that answer about types of renderers, I think it answers my question about Lux vs Yafaray. I have both, and just need to spend more time with each to see the pros & cons.
But it’s good to try several renderers, imho, just to find what fits your needs or time limits.
For me speed is more important than true to life realism, so Cycles GPU is what I use most, but
will spend more time with the others to see the advantages…and let them render overnight if necessary. 