I rendered by house in blender cycles and in Octane, and they both like nice but the octane render looks more realistic with more accurate lighting.
What I dont understand is, I thought Blender Cycles and Octane both used Path tracing if Im not mistaken.
And since path tracing is an unbiased rendering algorithm, shouldnt that mean both results should look the same since their using the same lighting technique.
Probably a mix of Octane being developed more in line as a physically-based renderer and a different approach to node-based materials. (which Octane uses spectrum-based rendering and possibly material types that are high-level enough to stand out alone rather than built from more basic components)
The material system might be here the big difference.
I still find Cycles materials very limited but it is a pretty fresh product more in the alpha stage
and not a production ready tool like Octane.
Time will tell.
I don’t see much difference in the actual finished renders aside from the artists talent, as far as renders go , I say a top notch cycles render would look just as good as a top notch octane render…there are some limitations of course such as a dedicated sss shader and optimized caustic lighting performance and a few other things but whatever.
First, I think Cycles Material system is actually more powerful than octane, you have many possibilities and options to shade even in each type of light path.
What Octane have is a nice online material system and library, which doesn’t have anything to do with the actual capabilities of the render engine.
Second, if you see how cycles integrate the light calculation you see that it is pretty accurate for physical/photorealistic rendering.
Octane support dispersion, but that doesn’t make the diference.
The fact is that what actually makes the renders looks better than cycles is because:
There is better artist using it, which better taste/sense of lighting/material and model detail. they have to buy it so you can guess that pretty much all the artist are proffesionals/advanced users. Blender is mainly populated by hobbits.
Tonemapping! Tonemapping and color grading are those touches that give you a big plus. In octane you can select different response curves to behave like real cameras. Cycles in the beginning got that option and then it was disabled to be used in the compositor, which didn’t happened yet.
So thats it, is not any real advantage or whatever, i see many artist say oh this render is much more realistic than this other, when in fact all those renders works essentially in similar way, believe me is not about the render engine, there isn’t such magic, artist makes the difference and the render facilitate that task.
Mike Pan, a very strong blender artist made this short with the blender internal render engine which is by definition an inaccurate bunch of algorithms put together and yet with a good artist you can get this:
When it comes to tonemapping and color grading take a look how the difference is some times decisive,
See how you go from the raw render output to the final postproduced one:
(Alex roman with vray)
Hope that makes sense.
Any chance to see both pictures side by side to compare what image parts “looks more realistic with more accurate lighting” ? Octane use real time tone mapping, as old Cycles before merge to trunk, it make big impact to overall image quality impression. As i understand Brecht slowly move to full realtime post-process preview viewport concept, maybe not in this year.
Wow… Blender internal can do that; he is one slick artist/modeller /nod
Remember, software provides tools and features.
It doesn’t have capability, only users have capability.
I’m using Octane, it’s good, very fast and ultra-realistic if needed. Still, it’s not a “magic button” either. It’s still a trial and error thing to do a good light setup, material etc.
Agus3D Cycles might enable you to use a material in a certain way you might not be able to do in Octane but do you need it for Octane? Nothing against mikepans BMW shot, but the rendering shows chrome ball material and black hole like shadows - which I would guess is simply due the fact that Cycles currently is very limited in some areas because it is not finished.
However I am pretty sure for product shots Octance is just giving you what you need - and I think like with Thea their gallery is enough proof that the system serves well the artist.
Hi, Thats was made in blender internal.
Apart from dispersion/SSS/tonemapping, Cycles can do all Octane can do, and Octane can’t do many of the materials trick that cycles can do, Cycles material system is more flexible therefore is able to do more things.
You can bet Cycles/Octane/thea/keyshot and so on, have similar kernel algorithms if not the same. some of them interpolate the GI solutions/some of them will do more smart sampling, but essentially they are very equivalent in teh way they work and the quality they output, all of them want to solve the rendering equation so all are aiming the same direction, the only real difference is the speed on how they compute the render.
From this state, any improvement in the lighting/material accuracy that anyone of them try to sell is more likely to be imperceptible or perceptible in specific setups. If you would like to compare the realism in a curve it will be like a logarithmic curve, there will not be any render that will do a huge jump on quality, all of them include cycles reached a very high accurate render system.
The problem with cycles is also there isn’t a nice gallery showing some professional or the amazing renders that has been already produced apart from the artist/tonemaping/post-prod factors.
So in short, the trend today is that all the renders are heading to raytracing, using similar techniques with some variations and fancy commercial names, but essentially most of them work in the same way.
Agus I think you overstate the value of those extra nodes such as ray nodes and undervalue the usefulness of shaders in apps such as Thea. The tricker stuff to exclude shadows now in Cycles done via the ray node is something hardly anybody doing product photography in many cases uses on a daily basis. True personally I prefer to have this kind but it is not a deal breaker.
The materials in Thea are actually quite powerful in the way the render out. Through out the years I noticed quite a difference between shaders in different applications, the code there still makes a significant difference.
But again Cycles isnt even beta yet.
I’m fairly sure it’s the tonemapping that makes it look more realistic to you. Tonemapping makes all the difference in the world and cycles only has one very rudimentary “exposure” setting, while Octane has much more options including measured camera response curves. Tonemapping is a post-process though, so there’s no stopping you doing it in the compositor or exporting an HDR to any program you like.
As an Octane user here’s some random thoughts on it:
I would love to see Cycles one day have a material setup like Thea. The only thing I don’t like about Thea is having to go to like 5 different menus to change the mapping of a material for each image file (unless there’s a global scale value somewhere that I’m missing?). But besides that it’s wonderful. Very intuitive, and it allows for an incredible range of effects with just a couple of simple settings.
There is better artist using it, which better taste/sense of lighting/material and model detail. they have to buy it so you can guess that pretty much all the artist are proffesionals/advanced users. Blender is mainly populated by hobbits.
The artist makes the difference. I can understand this. You need this “eye” to watch real light and try to convince others that you did something similar in your render. Though a fake image, still convincing. It’s art after all.
This goes to developers too. Do they know how real light looks like? How to fake it? Do they?
The simple truth: in blenderartists gallery there isn’t any cycles render yet. A lot octane renders though. And a lot of more convincing renders using other engines.
- Tonemapping! Tonemapping and color grading are those touches that give you a big plus. In octane you can select different response curves to behave like real cameras. Cycles in the beginning got that option and then it was disabled to be used in the compositor, which didn’t happened yet.
This option in cycles was a small ready made library, use Ps like apps instead, it’s easier and better.
Mad somewhat true but Octane is also made for a certain task - but well I personally prefer Thea simply because of being on a laptop and Thea having an extremely fast interactive renderer without a GPU already.
I think photographers or people who need a quick click solution will do fine with such products because they dont really have need to render anything more in detail other than plastic chrome metal paper silicon etc and thats it. The customer would not even pay for it.
I am not against Cycle at all because to be honest I rather like having access to a system which can grow but I would not call that better because you need to evaluate the software based on what it is intended for.