Adam please don’t get upset! I started by saying Cycles is cool and I meant it. I’m glad there is so much enthusiasm about this, it will make things move and Cycles become a workable option in time. I am ready to test it again when Blender 2.61 comes out. My computer is good enough but I don’t have the right video card to use with Cycles, I will try to fix that by December and hope to see much improvement. All I wish is for people to stop dismissing BI because I really think that for many, for some time still, Bi will be a better option if only they are encouraged to try it. Setting a Bi scene isn’t as difficult and time consuming when you get used to it. I will post my tests soon, just finishing the model first, hate to post unfinished work 
Hey, nice Pic and Tutorial, but how Andrew do this torus fluid?
When i do a torus as domain, its changning to a sphere.
Thanks
Oanav, I’m not upset, and sorry if my post came across as a little shrill.
At any rate, I certainly would never dismiss BI. I love BI and always will. I still use it every day for freelance work, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. BI is a perfect work horse, and it’s flexible as all can get out.
My point was that, for certain scenes (that bullet train render, for example) Cycles is a much better choice. In that particular scene, he’s playing shadows, lighting, glass, reflective shiny metals, etc. He also was having trouble with the way BI does background images. All of these things would make Cycles the right choice, especially for something like the bullet train render that is aiming at photo-realism (and comes so close to achieving it with BI.)
I think that people should master both. But, as I’ve been saying for some time now, Cycles is young. It’s getting better and faster very quickly. By the time 2.61 comes out, it’s going to be legendary. It already is.
If you’ve done some Cycles experiments, though, I wouldn’t wait for 2.61. Grab a new Cycles off Graphicall and bone up on it. Doing that, you’ll have a great grasp of what equipment you’ll want for Cycles. Like I said, I spent a hundred bucks on a medium-level nvid CUDA card, and I don’t feel the need to upgrade beyond that for a while. And there are tricks that can speed up a Cycles render, beyond just relying on the hardware. That’s why it’s good to spend time in Cycles Tests. Speed has always been a major topic in there.
However, I did start a BI Tests thread a while back. The major topic in that is speed. You could drop in there and join the fun, if you like.
Thanks Adam, I found the thread and I will read it. I’m not doing animation actually but it’s a good ideea I should post in the render topics.
Now you will think I am really (dough)nuts but what I wanted to do was to make the doughnut scene using BI. It is not a stupid attempt to prove it could be done as well (it clearly is not) and I’m not exactly trying to make any point against Cycles. But I am really fond of BI and it helped me get work done I am sure I wouldn’t have managed using external renderers due of my lack of time. I can’t get over the ugly “this is all you will get using BI” image Andrew posted, and though it is silly, here it is, BI doughnuts a bit improved… trying to save face so to speak 
I didn’t model everything properly and didn’t manage to do the fluid thing but took some pains with the light settings to replicate as much as I could the Cycles result. I use AO 1, Environment light 1.3 set on sky texture (with just a simple interior image set as background), three area lights a bit like the cycles setup, plus a couple of fill point lights. Also a bit of compositor for DOF and color. With AO samples at 12 and glossy samples around 20 it took 1.17h to render at 1200x2000 pixels. So that is that, got it out of my system, can go back to normal work Will test Cycles happily after getting new video card.
I will attach the “ugly” render too, for those who didn’t watch the tutorial:
Clearly Andrew did this on purpose to make the cycles presentatin clearer, as most Blender stuff I know I’ve learned from his tutorials
Nicely done! Great to see you giving it a go. It certainly takes a while to model all those things, so I admire your willingness to try. Keep it up!
Mmmmm… Donuts… (Homer J. Simpson)
Great donuts! I made a donut some time ago… it looked like a shadeless piace of biscuit.
Andrew, the standard of your tutorials and finished results is very professional. Congratulations on the render, and keep up with the creativity.
Bravo for this one and thanks for all your amazing free tuts on BlenderGuru.
Thank you for posting that. I’ve always said that you can acheive realistic results with BI, you just have to learn the proper steps to faking it, whereas with cycles you can simply set up a light or two and you’re already there.
I think that’s what andrew was trying to accomplish with his version - what BI looks like if you don’t try hard to fake it.
andrew sir, you are an inspiration and thank you for the wonderful tutorials
long life to cycles!