Cycles : The new renderer in Blender : Introduction

Cycles is a new rendering engine for Blender, developed by Brecht van Lommel working for the Blender Foundation.

It is integrated into the user interface from version 2.5, although initially was developped as a “Addon” (added plugin).

The goal of Cycles is to replace the internal rendering engine in the next Blender 2 years old, allowing real time feedback to the designer through the use of GPU as computing hardware, instead of the traditional CPU.

Here is a simple example that allows us to introduce this powerful tool. To do this we select as the engine cycles blender

Turn Cycles

To activate the rendering engine based on the “Cycles” select “Cycles render” in the top menu of the application.

At this time we will be working with the model for materials Cycles, textures and lighting.

We discuss the main steps that are necessary to start using this model rendering that, clearly, allow us to obtain images much more realistic than the traditional rendering engine that uses default Blender.

If we want to enable real-time interactive rendering, we use the menus associated with the 3D. We select “Rendered” and spend as facets based solid preview mode Cycles.

If we change the point of view of the scene from the moment, see how the image is updated in real time renderizándose.

solidly	Dodo cycles

Cycles lighting model

One of the main differences from the original rendering model is Blender how a scene is illuminated with Cycles.

Instead of using light spots, we use objects with emissive properties.

To introduce this concept and how it is applied a simple build materials completing scene which provides default Blender. Furthermore we initial cube, Add plans, one to make soil functions and a second surface that will act as a lamp.

Basic Scene

Select sequence each object in the scene to incorporate their surface properties, adding or modifying the variables that define the material.

To add a new material will enter the menu “Material” represented by the icon of a shaded sphere. Then, with the selected object, click on the button “New“.

New Material

When creating a new material parameters have a default. The basic type is “Diffuse BSDF” and we can change its color and roughness.

By material defects

We report a new type of material (properties) selecting among available. In the selector “Surface” will have several “Shader” or models that assign different ways of calculating the object. This pattern contrasts with the concept of basic material Blender.

Select material

To complete the scene assign different shaders to the elements that compose. For the plane acts as lamp type will use an emissive material.

Material emisivo

Leave the original cube with the default material and select the ground plane acts adding a material “Glossy”

Material Glossy

If we render the scene we see the result obtained with this simple example we introduced in Cycles.

Cycles rendered result

Image Quality

The quality of the obtained image depends on the number of integration steps (calculation) to be performed in each frame. Distinguish between preview mode and obtaining the final image, can be defined as the calculation parameter in both cases. In rendering the menu will have different options for determining the quality settings referred.

Rendering passes

By increasing the number of cycles of refinement or calculation will improve image quality but will increase the computation time. The calculation processing state of each image can be seen on top of the corresponding window.