Hi guys!!! i am from Greece and i am new in blender community.
I would like to ask things about blender.
So, blender is 3D graphics software and we use it for modeling, animation, texturing, rendering, video editing.
Blender use openGL API for rendering 3D vector graphics. My graphic card is onboard mobile intel 4 series express chipset family and dont support openGL API but i can render my models. How is this possible?
And last question:
OpenGL and Direct3D is API’s for real time rendering or this Api’s used and for off-line render process??
Rendering (usually) has nothing to do with your GPU. The vast majority of offline rendering happens on the CPU.
OpenGL is only used for window and viewport drawing. Your GPU doesn’t have full OpenGL support, but the subset of features that is supported is enough to do basic work in Blender.
Real-time rendering, obviously, happens in the GPU … e.g. in the “Game Engine.”
But Blender’s “Cycles” render-engine actually employs the GPU in a completely different way: as a massively-parallel numeric data-processor. It doesn’t use the GPU for its intended purpose. Instead, it uses the GPU as a device that is capable of performing matrix mathematics.
Blender’s user-interface is built using OpenGL, and at a fairly-minimal level. If you’ve succeeded in opening the Blender program at all, then you know that your hardware is capable of that much. It may or may not possess enough firepower to run the Cycles render-engine … but “the Cycles render-engine” is not the only render-engine that Blender natively supports.
My suggestion to you is … “jump on in, the water’s fine.” Start prowling around this website, and others. Start exploring the product, and, well, “expect to be baffled!” :yes: Ask questions here, and ask them freely. You’re among friends.
Well, cycles render engine supports GPU acceleration and has two rendering modes: throught cuda and openCL.
If i render my 3D models with cycles render engine, but my GPU does not support cuda or openCL technologies, then rendering process will hapen in my CPU??
And finally, what render engine can i use? Cycles or blender internal?
Blender has two main render-engines built in: Cycles, and BI. Each of them takes a completely different approach to the problem. Cycles is designed to exploit the parallel math-processing capabilities of the GPU, although it can use the CPU instead.
You can use either or both renderers in your project, as you see fit. (A great advantage of Blender is that, although the two algorithms are completely different, the models, camera and so-forth are the same.)
Personally, I think that Cycles’ real strength is in producing what we old photographers would call “soft-box lighting.” Very diffuse, very even, realistic handling of how light bounces around. Meanwhile, BI is great at spotlights, directional lights, crisp shadows, “highlgihts” to superimpose (composite …) into Cycles-rendered scene to give it “snap.”
Blender is also, now, very “node-based.” It has node-based compositing, textures, materials. Cycles is completely node-based. This gives you tremendous control over exactly how the information from various possible sources is combined and used to produce the result that you want.
And, gotta warn you: there’s a steep learning-curve ahead of you. But, all of us here have done it, and all of us here continue to do it. :yes: Just be prepared for the fact that sometimes the computer will seem to smack you in the face with a cast-iron skillet. But then, at other times, it will work visual magic. There are lots of books, lots of online video courses (e.g. BlenderCookie), and of course, this site. Welcome Aboard.™
So my friend, if my gpu don’t support GPGPU computation process throught openCL or cuda, then cycles render engine will use CPU for mathematic calculations and finally rendering the 3D models?
