Blender's rendering engine

There are several renderers that Blender can support at present. As for the contrast between them, we can look at the specific evaluation. The latest version of Blender has two built-in renderers:

Mixer internal combustion engine

The default built-in rendering engine is BI(Blender Internal). Use CPU for rendering calculation, which can render hair and support freestyle cartoon strokes. And achieve some effects that Cycles can't render, perfect material support and support for texture baking.

Disadvantages of this engine:

Self-luminous emission: map color is not supported, only intensity is supported. The self-luminous color can only be obtained by diffuse reflection, and indirect lighting can't even identify the self-luminous color mixed by material nodes (this BUG was not fixed until 2.72). So you can't use color maps to define the color of light, and another built-in rendering engine, Cycles, doesn't have this problem.

Bump bump: Node system is not supported, for example, adding bitmap+noise (superimposed and mixed with the front of the node), or procedural map-brick wall (color input bitmap). Even if you simply turn on the node function, only output a bitmap or checkerboard (program map), and then use it to perform concave-convex and diffuse reflection at the same time, diffuse reflection can be displayed normally, but concave-convex can't work normally, because once the texture is synthesized by the node, the mapping method of concave-convex map will only support "original" (other items are invalid), so you can't achieve the effect of using bitmap directly (the mapping method is the highest quality).

Although it is not perfect, this engine will not be updated, and the government will devote all its energy to developing a substitute, namely the Cycles renderer.

cycle

Default rendering engine. When version 2.60 was released, 20 1 1 added a rendering engine, which can use CPU or GPU for rendering calculation and support OSL(CPU mode). Using graphics card to render can greatly reduce rendering time compared with weak CPU.

When CUDA was first released, the minimum requirement for GPU rendering was SM_ 1.3 (this version can be supported by adding additional LIB library files. For example, the 9800GT of SM_ 1.0 is only effective for 2.6 1, but the GPU of 2.67 and above can only be used with the graphics cards of CUDA 2.0 and above (NVIDIA needs 4xx series and above) and OpenCL(ATI needs 7xxx series and above). Relatively speaking, GPU rendering CUDA support is better, and some OpenCL materials are not yet supported.

The ray algorithm used is path tracing, which has the advantages of simple setting parameters and accurate results. But the disadvantage is that it is noisy and easy to produce fireflies (white spots). Doubling the parameters or reducing the number of rays can be eliminated, but the rendering time will be greatly increased or the rendering result will be distorted.

Disadvantages of this engine:

There is no light group function with built-in renderer.

There are some restrictions on the materials and objects that can be rendered. For a long time, only mesh objects can be rendered. It was not until 20 13 that the support for fuzz (version 2.66), subsurface scattering SSS (version 2.67), volume (version 2.70) and fireworks (version 2.7 1 version) was gradually improved, but only CPU mode could be used. However, texture baking is version 2.7 1, and only version 2.72 supports cartoon strokes. It can be said that version 2.72 (CPU rendering) has eliminated these limitations. However, GPU rendering of CUDA didn't support all material types until version 2.77 released on 20 16. However, OpenCL's GPU rendering has only achieved some functions.

The replacement/subdivision function is experimental and has no formal support.

Program texture support is not complete, the number is not as much as the built-in renderer, except for checkerboard and brick wall, there is no color input port.

Generally speaking, this is a semi-finished product and is still being improved. The third-party renderer officially recommended by Blender (open source and free) is as follows:

LuxRender

Real open source renderer based on physical rendering engine. According to the rendering equation, light transmission is simulated to generate physically realistic images. This project is located in PBRT, but the difference is that it focuses on product rendering and artistic effects rather than academic and scientific purposes.

It supports unbiased (MLT/[ two-way] path tracking) and biased technologies (direct illumination, photon mapping), physically correct light source, advanced program texture, spectral illumination operation, dynamic blur and illumination group mixing. Starting from version 0.8, OpenCL accelerated rendering is also available.

LuxRender is distributed under a GPL license. Support plug-ins are provided for various mainstream 3D software including Blender.

Yafari

A free and open source ray tracing engine, pursuing high quality and photo-realistic rendering.

Before the period appeared, Blender's own rendering engine used photon mapping and final gathering. Compared with others, it is characterized by simple glass material setting, default templates to choose from, and direct support for the use of IES optical area network files, which is very simple and convenient for making some indoor scenes. However, rendering Blender fusion ball objects is not supported.

Blender is the 3D software that Yafaray mainly relies on, and it is released under the authorization of LGPL 2. 1.

threeleaf

An academic project, mainly used as a test platform for computer graphics algorithm development.

Compared with other open source renderers, it has many experimental rendering algorithms. Support more ray tracing algorithms, which means that you can create scenes and render different methods to see which one is the best. The graphical UI of the renderer supports interactive mode, which can feed back the rendering process in real time. Mitsubishi's code uses portable C++, realizes unbiased and biased technology, and re-optimizes the CPU architecture. It can run on Linux, MacOS X, Windows and SSE2-optimized x86 and x86_64 platforms.

Based on GNU General Public License (GPL 3rd Edition).

POV ray

The full name of Persistence of Vision Raytracer, developed in 1980s, is a free and open source rendering engine with a long history.

It uses basic text (POV scripting language) to describe the scene and generate images. POV scripts have Turing integrity and can be used to write macros and loop programs. Support subsurface scattering (SSS) and transparency, atmospheric influence, such as fog and media (smoke, clouds), photon mapping, pause and restart or shutdown after rendering, real-time rendering mode, etc.

Since version 3.7, POV-Ray has been licensed based on AGPL3 (or later).

Aqsis

A cross-platform 3D rendering engine conforming to the RenderMan specification, focusing on stability and production use.

Functions include: constructing solid geometry (CSG), depth of field (3D depth field), extensible shading engine (DSOs), instantiation, LOD, motion blur, NURBS surface, program plug-in, programmable shading, subdivision surface, sub-pixel replacement, etc. Official support for third-party commercial renderers is as follows:

Vray

VRay is a high-quality rendering software jointly produced by chaosgroup and asgvis, which was promoted by Manheng Company in China. VRay is the most popular rendering engine in the industry at present. Based on the V-Ray kernel, there are many versions such as VRay for 3ds max, Maya, Sketchup, Rhino, etc. , providing high-quality picture and animation rendering for excellent 3D modeling software in different fields, which is convenient for users to render various pictures.

octane

Octane is the world's first real GPU-based, omni-directional and physical rendering-based renderer. What does this mean? Only using the graphics card on the computer, you can get faster and more realistic rendering results ... Compared with the traditional CPU-based rendering, it allows users to get excellent works in less time.

However, other software can't do it like Octane. You can expect a speed increase of 10 to 50 times compared with traditional CPU-based rendering using only one current GPU.

Octane is not only fast, but also completely interactive, allowing you to work in ways you never dreamed of before, such as editing lighting, materials, camera settings, depth of field and so on. You can also get the rendering results in real time. It also allows you to work faster than you think. Under the new rendering method, you will explore your scene like a photographer. Octane makes rendering interesting again.

Octane is a commercial renderer developed by the developer who developed Cycles, so the two are very similar. This is also the first commercial renderer that supports Blender.

Renderman

RenderMan is a computer image rendering system, specifically a set of computer image rendering specifications based on the famous REYES rendering engine. All renderers that meet this specification are called RenderMan compatible renderers. The most famous of them are Pixar's 3delight and Photo, and there are some other free and open source RenderMan-compatible renderers in the industry.

Renderman, Pixar's famous rendering tool, has provided users with a non-commercial version for free since 20 14, and one of users' requirements for Renderman is to support the open source 3D graphics editing and rendering software Blender. Pixar meets this requirement, and Renderman 20 adds support for Blender. The PRMan of Blender extension was developed by a team led by Brian Savery. At present, it is still an Alpha version, and the source code is hosted on Gtihub.

Maxwell rendering

Maxwell is a rendering software, which can run independently and does not depend on other 3D software. It is a brand-new rendering engine. Based on the physical characteristics of real light, it reproduces the behavior of light according to completely accurate algorithms and formulas. The calculation principle of spectrum is adopted, which breaks the long-standing rendering technology such as light energy transfer and makes the results more realistic. All the elements in Maxwell, such as luminous body, material, light, etc. , completely generated by an accurate physical model. It can record the information of the interaction between all elements in the scene, and all illumination calculations are carried out by using spectral information and high dynamic region data.