Alternative to Cycles for Blender users?

Hi i am looking for a alternative for Cyles. Renderer should: 1.) Not slow down to a crawl because it cant handle mipmaps. 2.) Support rendertime tesselation so you dont need 256 GB RAM. 3.) Have correct fresnel behaviour by default. 4.) Play nicely with Blenders interface. Dont recommend Lux . I have lost faith in Cycles since Brecht left. Instead of listening to user reqzests the little development time they have they waste in completely pointless features. Furthermore they want too much for what is achievable by them( Cuda; OpenCl; CPU; OSL; SVM; Branched) while not grabbing low hanging fruits ( embree ) due too strange policies. Like how is it possible that in 2016 the only way of getting a correct fresnel effect is by watching Cynicat Pros YouTube Videos? That node groups should have been bundled from the Start. Latest discovery by Nutelz shows that by simply packing .tx textures in a .blend you geht drastic speedups. I mean seriously? I understand that you are seriously dev constrainted but everything i mentioned here is so aggrevating and basic that i just dont have and faith in Cycles anymore.

Different renderers have pros and cons. Cycles still has a way to go in some areas. Deformation motion blur, for example, brings Cycles to its knees. And it is still very ‘bare’ in the sense that what you get are the raw building blocks, rather than actual useful materials to start off with. So it has somewhat of a steep learning curve.

I’d agree that on the surface there are some more or less ‘pointless’ features being added, such as incredible flexibility in the exact tile order it renders, while, as you say, its very difficult to even get a useable fresnel effect going. Some of that might be due to new developers stepping up to the plate, and that they start off with easier features rather than improving the important stuff. Hopefully down the line there will be time and focus on the big missing or lagging features of Cycles.

On the other hand, the general direction of the renderer, and the way it’s architected is still pretty great. Brecht set it off in a great direction. Trouble is, now many of the next big things it needs are not really that easy to do.

As for other renderers, there are loads of raytracing engines available. Renderman is reasonably well integrated, for example, and is a very capable production renderer.

Cycles is pretty legit yo.

I know that Brecht set it up greatly. Unfortunately it has not moved along since then. I think supporting GPUs now hinders development more than it ails. Get a solid foundation on CPUs first than port it over once the GPU compiler and archs can handle and dont cripple everybody. Also we would be rendering nearly with the speed of GPU with a CPU if they included Embree and mipmapping like Arnold. These two features are already developed and give great speedups. Instead we get traversal code with bugs, when they could have settled for the best with less effort. Thinks like this dont make make me question if developers really know what they are doing. If the good renderers are not integrated well i may AS well leave Blender alltogether.

I also think having two shader backends is not really maintainable. OSL is more elegant but has not seen any dev love because of GPU. Aparently in Octane OSL works in GPUs!

Hi anaho, I think there is no engine on market with all features you want.
Vray has tesselation but only for Hair (iirc), Octane has fresnel but glossy materials are not 100% physically correct and so forth.
No idea about mipmap.

Cheers, mib

Both Octane and Vrays quality will be fine. Since you seem to use Octane for Blender how do you like it compared to the Max Plugin? Or i am going Maya Arnold Route.

Well, first of all, to answer the “why don’t the developers do xyz”: Because the developers are volunteers and do what they like to do. This is open source: Complaining on the forum won’t lead you anywhere, and if you depend on people doing the stuff you want in their free time, “Could x be added” is a lot more productive than “Why was x not added 100 years ago, idiots everywhere” (I’m exaggerating here, but you know what I mean).

As for the individual points:

  • Embree sounds easy, but it’s not: You need to get the geometry into it from Blender’s side, you need some features it doesn’t offer (like fast visibility flags checks during traversal) and you still need another traversal code anyways since Embree is CPU-only. Besides that, Cycles’ traversal code is using lots of Embree code, so it wouldn’t be that much faster anyways.
  • “Strange Policies”: Which “policies” do you mean? Like not breaking existing scenes?
  • “they want too much for what is achievable by them”: That doesn’t make any sense - you make a post about the features you need, and then complain about devs “wanting too much”. Or do you mean users with “they”?
  • Fresnel: Well, guess what, it wasn’t bundled from the start, and I’d like to see the forum response here if the behavior of the Glossy node was suddenly “fixed” and all scenes would render differently. I’m in fact working on an additional, better (but also a bit slower) glossy implementation, but nothing’s done yet. Also, I should probably mention that it’s impossible to get a correct Fresnel with current Cycles, no matter which node setup you build.
  • TX files: Go complain to the OSL/OIIO developers about that, it’s the OIIO texture cache that slows this down (and is not used when packing images, therefore the speedup).
  • Dropping GPU: Seriously? I’m not even going to discuss that one.
  • OSL not getting any support: You do realize that the OSL code that Cycles uses is being written by Sony Imageworks, not by Blender devs? Maybe that’s a good example that not everything is the Blender dev’s fault.
  • Octane OSL: Read their blog post, what they explain there is essentially the Cycles Split Kernel in fancy marketing language. That makes it pretty obvious that they’re not actually running OSL on the GPU, they just run traversal etc. on the GPU, copy all the stuff to the CPU, run OSL there and copy the results back. Performance is probably a catastrophe.

Final point: If “everything [you] mentioned here is so aggrevating and basic”, what’s stopping you from doing it yourself? As I said, it’s open source, go ahead. Or is it maybe not that easy and writing complaints on BA is easier…

The Maya and Max plugins are most evolved plugins for Octane, Blender for Octane development is slow.
Check out the demos

Cheers, mib.

I think i have made myself clear by explaining everything to very much technical Expertise more than should be required for a artists btw. Embree example is perfect for strange policy i dont know what you make if it. The rest is just some relativation done by you that helps neither me nor the engine. It is that attitude plus the bold statement i should do it myself that this place is loathed by professionals. Well guess what i am already getting it done myself. And that is by switching to a render engine that simply delievers.

Protip: Piss in the mouth of the people who are able to help you do something you are incapable of doing yourself. Arrogance and douchbaggery will get you far in the world. I can only imagine what you are like to work with. Very unprofessional.

Also i never said that anything was easy. I just said basic as in basic for a feature of an offline renderer. I appreciate your time and effort. If features are too hard too implement thats ok because there are products out there that already did it.

I asked for a render engine that fulfills my complaints. I did not
Want to hurt your religious feelings over something. If you think everything is fine i am okay with that. But how come you are no longer allowed to talk about glaring deficiencies?

Thanks Lukas for the detailed and objective explanation!

Hi, can you elaborate this point a bit? It seems like you critique pretty harshly, that would be great because I want to further improve LuxBlend and need critique from a users point of view. Would be very appreciated.

I wanted to say the same.

I dont critique pretty harshly. I spend years with Cycles and for the most part liked it. I am no native speaker so i guess i should have thought about meaning more. I dont want to shun Cycles nor devs but these points of criticism exist.

Developers are usually very open for critique. When you start a dialog with them, it helps to have an appropriate attitude and not to tell them from the very beginning that they are failing since Brecht left. Maybe just asking why certain things are not done in the way you would expect them to be would be more appropriate. Keep in mind that most of them are volunteers and I am sure they have more pleasant hobbies than being treated like that. This kind of attitude is the reason why there are so few developers here in the forum!
They are people who invest a huge amount of their time without being paid. The least they should get from us is a little bit of respect!

The issue is not mentioning deficiencies, it’s the insulting way in which it’s done.
Nobody has any problem with “Hey, the Fresnel term is wrong, would it be possible to fix it?” - but what you do is more like “Wow, Cycles devs are too stupid to do the most basic stuff, they can’t even get Fresnel right”. I could now post 2 pages of text why correct Fresnel in Cycles is way harder than you think, but to what result?

Again, problem is the attitude you show - somehow you seem to have the impression that Blender devs have to create an engine that fulfils your needs. Guess what: Nobody owes you anything.
Also, you constantly feel the need to casually insult the devs along the way by mentioning “so basic”, “totally pointless”, “low hanging fruits”, “crippled features”, “make me question if developers really know what they are doing”, “too hard too implement [implied ‘for you guys’]”.
If you want to seriously ask for renderer tips, do so - if you want to flame and hate around and insult coders, go troll elsewhere.

Edit: Whoops, didn’t see the posts after #13 before replying…

What is a problem in lux core for me is the same as in Cycles. Mo rendertime displacement. Old lux has it but lacks visibility hacks as Cycles has and is excruciantingly slow ( but brautifully). I dont think any of this has to do with luxblend though.