Cycles Test (Model by Rex Harby)
You’ve probably heard of the new renderer being developed, Cycles. I’ve always been interested in realism and so this new renderer is really good news for me.
It’s currently in pre-alpha stage (despite what I accidentally say in the video) which means that there are tonnes of bugs and little integration with most functions of Blender, so don’t expect it to work like a charm.
Cycles Test (Click for tank tracks tutorial)
However, it’s perfectly capable of creating something decent. The images on the right are just something I made to test out cycles and find whatever major bugs there might be. Surprisingly, there are not so many serious bugs that stop you from doing what you want – despite a few crashes every now and then (mostly when playing with nodes too much and testing things you know probably won’t work) Cycles has definitely got a very large future in Blender.
You could think of it as a brother of Luxrender. It has GPU rendering (my favourite feature!) and a similar material system.Be warned though, it takes getting used to and there is very little documentation on it. But, if you’re like me and you like to play with stuff that technically hasn’t been released yet, then go ahead and download Cycles!
Watch this video to find out how to use some of the key features of Cycles including materials, lighting and camera effects.
More on Cycles:
Cycles Announced
Cycles FAQ
Interesting Tests
Video Demonstration by Mike Pan
PS: I’m still sick, so I’m really sorry if my voice annoys you in the video. Once I get better I’ll record this one :)
First to comment:) I haven't watched the video yet 'cause I too live in south africa and the internet here is quite terrible. I have watched demo videos and it looks really good so far and really fast from what I have seen. This could be a new exciting chapter for us blenderers (what ever you want to call us blender users) :)
blenderheads :)
I live in SW Missouri and the interwebs is pretty terrible too, in fact, everywhere I've lived I've had bad connection/service,I think it follows me or something.
@Tommy - from your picture I see you're a digitalblasphemy fan :P that guy rocks
@Jimmy - yeah, it seems the whole world is against us slow people :/ but I could bet you a lot of money that my internet is on average slower than yours :P
this is really good! thanks a lot!
Thanks a lot, I didn't yet get as far as you with all the options and great potential Cycles has, thanks for showing more settings to investigate!
It looks promising, but I think I'll wait till it's more complete before playing with it. Thanks for the demo.
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congratulation Greg , your useful tutorials is now in the blender nation ,)
As far as I know, the "GPU Rendering" demonstrated in the video is not GPU rendering, merely realtime CPU rendering. The good news is that real GPU rendering is supported and appears in the dropdown box as described. It is much faster than the realtime CPU rendering shown here. However, the bad news is you need two things: An nVidea graphics card with CUDA (other cards will be supported via openCL soon I think), and a build of blender with CUDA support compiled into it. I'm not sure if these are available for Windows yet, tho I think there is a Linux version. Only if the dropdown box appears do you have these requirements.
In addition, the so called camera selection is in fact allowing you to choose the film type. This simulates different photographic films, and their responsiveness to different colours of light.
Yeah thanks for that. I am using windows so I guess there's no GPU rendering yet (since I do have an nvidia card [8600] and theres no dropdown box thingy)
Still, any realtime rendering is very much epicness in my mind :)
Actually windows builds do have gpu rendering.
It is either you dont have the supported graphics card. or not the latest drivers. I think driver version 275.1 is needed...but it tells you on graphical
I have v275.33 and a GeForce 9600 GT and i have gpu/cpu selection
Oh and try to watch what you say, 'cuz you say "...and yeah..." so many times ;)
Stop making that sound with your mouth. It sound like your eating candy.
Just to clarify the exposure settings, its a film simulator not lenses. They are different brands, types and speeds of camera film stock. Different films capture color and contrast differently.
I hope they add motion picture films eventually like kodakvision or fuji eternia.
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how come if i try render some scenes i've already created through cycles, the material doesn't show up on the object, or it gets rid of any texture maps i've put on them?
Some of the code has been rewritten or changed, so old materials won't work properly in a newer version. However there is a build of cycles you can use as a catalyst - open an old file in this build and save it again and it'll work in the newer versions. I use r41652 as my catalyst build. Look for it on graphicall.org