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 210920
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 25, 2020 562978
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 25, 2020 426110
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 431846
Tutorials Top 15 Highest-Rated Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 375746
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 for Blender 2.8 file Jan 23, 2019 344833
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 23, 2019 684132
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 23, 2019 408230
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 file Jan 23, 2019 344756
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2018: Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2019 381513
Blender Retrospectives 2018 Blender Retrospective file Jan 02, 2019 375904
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2017 file Jan 09, 2018 968813
Blender Retrospectives 2017 Blender Retrospective file Jan 01, 2018 696622
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2017: Winners Annouced file Dec 26, 2017 550595
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials (Videos) Released in 2016 file Jan 16, 2017 765264
Blender Retrospectives 2016 Blender Retrospective file Dec 29, 2016 1060147
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2015: Seven Winners Annouced file Jan 20, 2016 790403
Blender Retrospectives 2015 Blender Retrospective file Jan 12, 2016 762112
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2015 file Jun 26, 2015 805465
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2014: Five Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2015 813683
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2014 file Dec 11, 2014 852558
Render of the Week '... Reality TV?' by Didier Barreteau - the Winner of the Week of September 22, 2014 file Sep 22, 2014 37431
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of September 22, 2014 file Sep 22, 2014 33258
Render of the Week 'Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea' by Grant Parsley - the Winner of the Week of September 15, 2014 file Sep 15, 2014 37485
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of September 15, 2014 file Sep 15, 2014 39858
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of September 8, 2014 file Sep 08, 2014 34660
Render of the Week 'Mercenaries' by Kalinin Dmitrii - the Winner of the Week of September 1, 2014 file Sep 01, 2014 36094
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of September 1, 2014 file Sep 01, 2014 32576
Render of the Week 'Rainy Day in the Forest' by Niko Maisuradze - the Winner of the Week of August 25, 2014 file Aug 26, 2014 34698
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of August 25, 2014 file Aug 26, 2014 32612
Render of the Week 'Green Basilisk' by Michael Grebstad - the Winner of the Week of August 18, 2014 file Aug 18, 2014 38282
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of August 18, 2014 file Aug 18, 2014 33046
Render of the Week 'The Waterfall House' by Mateusz Kociolek - the Winner of the Week of August 11, 2014 file Aug 11, 2014 37714
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of August 11, 2014 file Aug 11, 2014 33226
Render of the Week 'Fiend of Chaos' by Kfir Merlaub - the Winner of the Week of August 4, 2014 file Aug 05, 2014 33860
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of August 4, 2014 file Aug 05, 2014 34618
Render of the Week 'Gladiador de las arenas' by Pablo Rethemias - the Winner of the Week of July 28, 2014 file Jul 29, 2014 34733
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of July 28, 2014 file Jul 29, 2014 32048
Render of the Week 'Construction Site' by Roberto Dailey - the Winner of the Week of July 21, 2014 file Jul 21, 2014 38407
Blender Whiz The Artist Behind 'Creek:' Abdul-mu'min Smith file Jul 21, 2014 49349
Render of the Week 'Nectar: Media Center Bar' by Enrico Cerica - the Winner of the Week of July 14, 2014 file Jul 14, 2014 36264