here's a try at blender / cycles

[acc24ex]

so I gave it a go and ended up with this..

[acc24ex]

sp I actually started this project now

https://www.facebook.com/iCubeYou

so it would be nice to share or like - if any of you support projects like that

[matej]

Cant see cause I don't have facebook

It's great you are trying out Blender

[acc24ex]

I am loving at how fast and configurable Blender is - I need to learn more of the workflow with it, but it is just amazing at how fast you can model - how it is configurable, and fast, and I can spread windows across three monitors:



It feels like c4d with a cofigurable GUI - and cycles seems to run slow, but it works pretty well - it even uses the built in lights - maxlive plugin doesnt do that - still octane feels faster - but definitely I am loving Blender

BTW what are social networks are people using anyway? The communication is pretty fast on FB thats why..

[ROUBAL]

I am a Blender used since 2004, and I love it, but for the render engine, I prefer Octane. This said,if we don't get a better integration with Blender, I may have to use Cycles in the future because Octane is not usable for animation of big scenes, due to the huge export/load time.

But for now, I prefer Octane. IMHO, the setup of materials for Cycles in Blender with nodes is tedious and longer compared to the setup in Octane.

[acc24ex]

Still.. I was just amazed at how much you get for free - the end results are the same with Blender - really I was learning it for one day and this was a result of a all night long tweaking - it was slow, but the results worked out great

[matej]

Cycles in not necessarily slower than Octane (you sure that you rendered in GPU mode, not CPU?), in fact in my experience it can be faster. Basically in Octane it's easier to get nice renders with little work, in Cycles it's a bit more involving - but at the same time you have more flexibility & tools than in Octane. But some capabilities doesn't really compare between the two. Cycles & Octane are two complementary tools for me, because one has the things the other doesnt and vice-versa.

Creating a shader from scratch in Cycles takes longer than in Octane. But Cycles already has a lot more shading tools (nodes / options) than Octane and when you have your basic building blocks (node trees) set up, you just Shift-D / append / link them in your project. For a modular approach & tidy node graph the "group" nodes are your friends. I use them extensively (Octane macro nodes are not nearly the same thing):

groups.jpg

Linking your node tree datablocks from a library (instead duplicating materials / blocks everywhere) is also a must-have for any bigger projects. (this would be the "LocalDB" feature in Octane world)

Also, talking about shading - Octane graph editor is really a hardcore mess of nodes and links

[matej]

Also, one thing to know about Cycles shading is that Cycles surface nodes (BSDF-s) are basic "low level" things. Octane "glossy" shader for example already has diffuse / glossy / transparency... components you can tweak, but in Cycles you must create such "high level" glossy material yourself - that means mixing shaders must be used (a lot more). Say you want to create a plastic material: you need to mix at least three BSDF-s to create it (diffuse, glossy, transparent / glass / translucent)

This modular approach takes a bit more time to set up, but can be more powerful.

btw,
one thing that I find incredible in Octane is how well mixing shaders scales - there is very little overhead (last time I checked) of mixing say ten shades together. In other software I used, mixing shaders is (a lot) more costly.

/rant

[acc24ex]

I didn't do a lot of comparisons, and yes I am using gpus..
This then is a heavy setup, two interior lights.. Took about an hour to clear up, on a 4gpu computer..
Thx for the material info didnt check too many of those settings..