Combined render engine BI and Cycles (any news about it ?, or a link ?

A few weeks ago, there was a new article at blender.org
It was about someone who combined steps from BI and Cycles to get a faster render result.
And he wrote that he was only a few from completing his combined render engine.
So it wasnt 100% cycle raytrace, but still his results where stunning.

Usuallly i copy such article links (as there is no way to search back news articles at blender.org).
Sadly dough … i lost the link.

Maybe someone has link to the article, or knows any news updates about it (or perhaps a thread here ?).

You can kinda do that using the compositor…

Are you sure he wasn’t just compositing BI render-passes into Cycles renders? Because you can already do that, not sure that it’s definitively faster though.

if it renders like that in real time, this means the game engine could become a show stopper.

Ehm i dont understand why that would be.
I think they just used parts of cycles and blender internal; sure each have their limits; but they took just the fastest of each.
So it wouldnt be faster then BI (i guess), but it was a lot faster then cycles, and with results close to cycles.
They didnt invent an all new render from scratch, so i dont think their speed is faster then BI

Looks like just compositing separate scenes to me. Not especially mind blowing, considering that in a production it’s really rare that a shot is made with a single renderer or piece of software.

I don’t know why anyone would get that impression

There is indeed work coming out in the new GPU Pro 5 about combining rasterization and raytracing in a single renderer for real time (http://cg.ivd.kit.edu/ORTFDS.php) but it’s quite a bit more complicated than just comping them together.

Although I’ve never taken anything to nearly this level of graphic sophistication, this is an extremely powerful technique that Blender even now makes very, very accessible. And I would definitely like to see, well, a “unified render-nodes / material-nodes system” of some sort that would make it really easy and ‘official.’

  • OpenGL, through the window formerly known as “preview renders,” can today do a tremendous amount of rendering in virtually real-time. No, it’s not necessarily going to do everything you want, but it’s gonna come real close. And it’s gonna do it real fast, which definitely counts for, well, “everything.”
  • On top of that, let’s hear it for BI! Yeah, the traditional “old” renderer, now relieved of the duty to create what OpenGL can already do.
  • And then, finally, Cycles. Using (most of) the same geometry, albeit with a fundamentally different approach to the process of rendering. Also being used to provide “the icing on the cake.”

A huge advantage of Blender is that all of this is “under one roof.” Drawing from the same data structures, the same linked-library system and so on. The potential to produce a r-a-p-i-d animation and rendering workflow within the scope of a single software product.

I definitely would like to see “rapid advances” on this front, because very often I don’t have days, or even many hours, to spend getting a result. I need it now. I very much want to see integration features within Blender that would enable me to leverage all of the image-producing capabilities of this system, specifically including those that employ the GPU “in the conventional way.”

this looks promising. I will keep an eye on this thread. :slight_smile:

sorry reposted the same message twice

Yes it was a test of our studio:

We did combine a few nodes but also some cycles nodes and some drivers to “fake” light directions.
But the sectet here is that we click the render button only onces :slight_smile:
We will soon upload a mini site on our site volcano-s.com to explain more on the proccess.

Also we will start two new threads, one is a call for help in osl and with scripting the addon.
The second, will be kind of a poll to ask everyone what is the most time consuption render elements they need, for example is it AO? SSS?
For me it was the shiny materials for products we render but for other people it might be something else.

The final “vision” of our addon is a simple check box system addon with all the “fast elements”.

Thank you!