Sign In
Sign in
English

TopBanners12072302.jpg

This is a follow-up article of BI vs. Yafaray vs. Cycles - an Artist's Observation published on June 4, 2012 by Olivier Boscournu,
 the winner of the Render of the Week Award for the week of May 14, 2012. 
The following article may not reflect the official view of www.BlenderNews.org.—Editor in Chief.

July 2, 2012 8:00 AM

by Olivier Boscournu

After " Bidirectional Interior" where I did compare the 3 renderers for an indoor scene, I decided to do the same for an outdoor arch viz.

Exterior-BI-Yafaray-Cycles.jpg
Blender Internal: 12 min.
Yafaray (Photon Mapping): 18 min.
Cycles with GTX460: 9 min.

The goal is not to get the same renderings, but to observe what happen when you switch between the three methods, with as lest changes of settings as possible (only shaders & lights). The three renderings have almost the same post-compositing based on the BI passes (Blender nodes, color correction, vignetting, fog effect,...). The scene is not really complex (a simple snow ground, basic architecture, few furnitures, ...), the shaders are not sophisticated. The forest is made with a particle system and only one birch tree made with a slaping add-on. The sky lighting is obtained with an UVmapped hemisphere, used as an emit object for shader. This simple method provides good and fast results for all kinds of render engine, saving lot of time. 

Making-of-OAV12072302.jpg

Of course, BI doesn't have a Global Illumination solution, but GI is not really necessary for outdoor scene, specially in this case, and the Ambient Occlusion can be very usefull to simulate this kind of lighting with an HDR environnement. I believe, every new Blender user must learn to know how to use the Blender Internal. The method is quite old, but you get to learn a lot about how to configure the textures and lightings. It's useful for improving your technical skills. Blender Internal is pretty fast and versatile with several of rendering passes.

After BI, I've needed just a few minutes to configure the lighting method and the shaders in Yafaray. That's what I love with Yafaray, its workflow is very easy and fast, providing good results. New users can easily see that. Renderings are pretty fast that it's helpful for configuring the right settings and the border render allows fast previews on focalized areas. The rendering with Yafaray and it GI solution is 50% slower than BI on the same size (1600 x 1200 px), but it's pretty fast and requires less tweaks in lightings.

Cycles still has much room to be improved but is very efficient for outdoor--unlike for indoor arch viz. This is because it uses only a Pathtracing integrator, more suitable with opened scene and huge light source. To produce the final rendering, I had to convert each shader to make it fit for Cycles. I like the versatility and the power of its node shaders, but it's imperative to have a good CUDA graphic card with you so as to benefit from the full potential of this render engine. That's why I used my Nvidia GTX 460 (1 GB RAM & 336 CUDA cores) to get a good rendering time. With CPU it would take more than one hour!

Exterior-BI-Yafaray-Cycles-Settings.jpg

Conclusion
With a simple outdoor scene as in this case (no transparent leaves on trees, no grass,etc...), Blender users will be able to use different methods and renderers. With BI, the basic solution, you can do the job but you needs more tweaks and extra time to enhance the result. Yafaray, as external GI and biased solution, is the fastest and easiest way to get a photorealistic result on CPU! After passing a little time to know Yafaray, it's a real pleasure. As for Cycles, it's very useful with the realtime preview, and its node system provides incredible results. But in most cases, You need a good--sometimes expansive--Nvidia graphic cards.


Hardware spec.:
intel i7-2600k ( 3,4GHz), 16 Go DDRam, Nvidia GTX 460 1GoRam ( 336 cuda cores), windows7 64bits. Yafaray & BI rendering processed with 4 cores CPU, Cycles render on GPU. Made with official Blender 2.63a-64bits & official Yafaray 0.1.2 beta5a-64bits.

Related Links:
1. http://www.blendernation.com/2012/06/16/bi-vs-cycles-vs-yafray-an-artists-observation
2. http://www.olivier-boscournu.com
3. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?256953-Comparison-BI-Yafaray-Cycles-for-outdoor-archiviz
List of Articles
Subject Date Views
Blender Retrospectives 2020 Blender Retrospective Feb 20, 2021 210979
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 25, 2020 563075
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 25, 2020 426180
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 431931
Tutorials Top 15 Highest-Rated Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 375821
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 for Blender 2.8 file Jan 23, 2019 344939
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 23, 2019 684254
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 23, 2019 408332
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 file Jan 23, 2019 344854
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2018: Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2019 381604
Blender Retrospectives 2018 Blender Retrospective file Jan 02, 2019 375990
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2017 file Jan 09, 2018 968938
Blender Retrospectives 2017 Blender Retrospective file Jan 01, 2018 696718
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2017: Winners Annouced file Dec 26, 2017 550692
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials (Videos) Released in 2016 file Jan 16, 2017 765350
Blender Retrospectives 2016 Blender Retrospective file Dec 29, 2016 1060242
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2015: Seven Winners Annouced file Jan 20, 2016 790496
Blender Retrospectives 2015 Blender Retrospective file Jan 12, 2016 762209
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2015 file Jun 26, 2015 805562
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2014: Five Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2015 813776
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2014 file Dec 11, 2014 852655
Render of the Week 'Lanterns in The Forest' by Francis Harkins - the Winner of the Week of May 5, 2014 file May 05, 2014 40085
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of May 5, 2014 file May 05, 2014 35264
Render of the Week 'King Vulture' by José Mario Pérez Cotes - the Winner of the Week of April 28 2014 file Apr 29, 2014 48605
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 28, 2014 file Apr 29, 2014 33698
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 14, 2014 file Apr 14, 2014 34063
Render of the Week 'Fish Detective' by Kamil 'mookie' Kuklo - the Winner of the Week of April 21 2014 file Apr 21, 2014 40930
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 21, 2014 file Apr 21, 2014 34257
Render of the Week 'Sanctuary Rising' by Jesse Sutherland - the Winner of the Week of April 14, 2014 file Apr 14, 2014 38888
Render of the Week 'The Warehouse' by Ben Foulds - the Winner of the Week of April 1, 2014 file Apr 07, 2014 38566
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 7, 2014 file Apr 07, 2014 37483
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of March 31, 2014 file Mar 31, 2014 34688
Render of the Week 'Junk' by Ben Foulds - the Winner of the Week of March 31, 2014 file Mar 31, 2014 34023
Render of the Week 'Realistic Dragonfly' by Manuel Peter - the Winner of the Week of March 24, 2014 file Mar 25, 2014 41127
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of March 24, 2014 file Mar 25, 2014 35439
Render of the Week 'The Ancient Life Timeline Series' by Karen Carr - the Winner of the Week of March 17, 2014 file Mar 17, 2014 42409
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of March 17, 2014 file Mar 17, 2014 34720
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of March 10, 2014 file Mar 11, 2014 32267
Render of the Week 'The Beast' by Max Puliero - the Winner of the Week of March 10, 2014 file Mar 11, 2014 39494
Render of the Week 'The Winter' by Miguel Porces - the Winner of the Week of March 3, 2014 file Mar 03, 2014 36638
Blender Whiz The Artist Behind 'the German Castle:' Prashant Kumar file Mar 03, 2014 31278