Fastest External renderer for Blender 2.71??

Hey guys! As the title says I wanted to know which is the fastest external render engine for blender. I have to meet dead lines for a project but rendering with cpu is very slow in cycles and blender render is outdated. Plus the project(animation) needs volumetric rendering(for fire/smoke) which makes it even more slower to render with cpu. My previous graphics card broke and I cant buy a new one in near future. :(. My main concern is speed, I don’t need like too realistic renderes as its an animation. The only external renderer I tried to date is Mitsuba, its pretty fast than cycles and produces good quality renders even with less samples. But i read somewhere on the internet that its kinda for research and not production renders and it doesn’t support volumetric rendering. So, please suggest a fastest external renderer.

Thank you.

If you’re on a deadline for a job you’re getting paid for, use a render farm. There isn’t a feature-complete renderer out there that is going to be fast for animation on a personal computer. You could consider looking into real-time solutions like UE4 or CryEngine, but without a GPU this isn’t really an option.

Thanks for replying. I’m volunteering for this project(its going to be posted on a site), my other teammates are rendering the animation day and night, and one of them is also using some paid renderfarm i guess.using a renderfarm will be the last option for me as i don’t want to throw my money on the project.

Rather than finding a new render engine and invest time in learning how to use it i would stick to Cyles and render with it, even the speed is kinda slow. I say that you will need more time to learn a new render engine (google searches, youtube tutorials etc). Hope you understand what i`m saying.

Or just switch your materials back to Blender Internal and render using that. No need for an external engine.

Hi, if there is a render engine, feature complete, and double fast as Cycles everybody would use it.
Cycles is fast but you need adjust your settings to get shortest render times with branched pathtraching.
May time to invest in a book about Cycles: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/blender-cycles-lighting/9781782164609/ch10s05.html
You can try RayPump farm for free with some limitations but really good and fast as hell for test render.
http://raypump.com/pro#Menu

Cheers, mib
EDIT: Small tutorial from DingTo, Non Progressive is now Branched Pathtracing!
http://dingto.org/?p=690

Fastest with quality, I would say Yafaray and Vray.

Thanks for replying everyone, The project is over(all done with cycles) but my search for a good rendering engine is on. I tried Octane, its looks quite promising and most of all its fast. But I think it will take some time and effort to master it and utilize its full potential.

Fastest with quality, I would say Yafaray and Vray.

Vray requires to buy its standalone version to buy before you can use it which is quite expensive. I downloaded Yafaray, but its latest version is not working with blender v2.71 and 2.72 (atleast when I tried).

Hi Dark_Net001, you can try a “Fork” of Yafaray called TheBounty, it is under development for better integration in Blender. It work with Blender 2.72.
The RC2 builds include render engine and Addon.

http://thebounty.wix.com/bounty

Cheers, mib
P.S. The Linux version cant use .jpg images for textures atm., use .png for example.

Btw… TheBounty is not the best option for render ‘smoke’ or volumetrics simulations. I am work on add support, but atm is very w.i.p.

Octane Render is not free dude!

I can`t find a 3delight version for Blender on their website: http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php

Can you provide a link please? I`m using Blender 2.72 64 bit

these two sentences are in contraddiction. If realism is not an issue, blender internal is not obsolete. see the 3 first open movies…

Blender Internal is not ‘outdated’, art you make with it can never be ‘outdated’.

Art is art!:smiley:

download link
3delight version for Blender on their website
http://mattebb.com/projects/3Delight_blender/download/render_3delight_0.7.6.zip

The thing that’s going to let you meet your deadline … or not … really is: “how you approach the project itself.”

Immediately disavow yourself of the notion that you will ever run (or submit) “a single render job” which, by itself and with no post-processing, produce (“tah-dahhhh!!”): The Complete Shot.™

Instead, what you need to plan to do is … to plan. Break the shot down into constituent visual parts that will eventually be composited together. This is exactly like the “multi-track recording” process that is used to make every recording that you hear on the radio, and for exactly the same reasons.

Once you have a particular visual component, “isolated and pristine” and saved into its own MultiLayer OpenEXR(!) file, you can begin to build-up the shot in a “mix-down” process, exactly like they [used to …] do with those massively-wide control panels in recording studios. You can tweak the shot-in-progress in real time, and decide what needs to be done next. The goal is not to have to re-render anything.

Start with an OpenGL quick-render of the entire sequence. This will exactly correspond to the finished shot … and, oh by the by, that OpenGL output (or, rather, other OpenGL outputs …) can often be used as part of “the finished shot.” No one gets to change the film after the final picture-lock. Nothing’s gonna get rendered except the exact frames that the previz indicates are required.

What you absolutely cannot tolerate is … what most people do attempt. Namely, “I’ve got to spend a day-and-a-half (or more) rendering this, and, if it’s not exactly right, I’ve no choice but to spend another day-and-a-half, and another and another and another.” You need to, first of all, start with an approved previz-shot, and then systematically move, sub-render by sub-render, “mixing-down all the way,” until you arrive at the point where you choose to say, “okay, that’s good enough. Shrink-wrap it and ship it.”

And, “oh Lord, cheat the hell out of every shot!” :yes: Come up with at least two other ways to do any computationally-expensive stuff, like fire-and-smoke, and be sure in any case to wind up with a compositeable layer consisting (say …) “only the fire, no smoke,” and, say, “only the smoke, no fire,” and, say, “only a distortion-mask that suggests the presence of heat.” When faced with any obstacle, step back and say, “well, how else could we do that … just good enough?” If Star Wars Episode One shipped to theaters with a podracer-crowd that actually consisted of colored Q-tips cotton swabs, so can you.