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In 2.79, I could get easily acceptable quality from the native renderer. I'd like to move to 2.80 but can't get a good quality render from cycles and eevee is far worse.

The files below are an old practice image that used many of the basic techniques that I needed to practice. I'm more interested in technical drawings but needed something a bit more capable than the free Sketchup offered.

http://www.bcae1.com/temp/blender%20help/

Can I get a clean render (no fireflies?), proper clear transparencies, clean reflections in cycles? In blender render, it was so simple. In cycles, I'm having no luck.

To make it easier to show new settings: http://www.bcae1.com/temp/blender%20help/hydrauliccylindertransparenttube01.blend

This will allow anyone helping to change the materials for the tube without having to try to go through the mess I have on the larger file.

Thanks to all who posted.

I think, for now, I've found a solution that will work for me (Radeon ProRender). The controls work as I expect. I'm sure that Cycles works as well or better since I've heard very little about the Radeon renderer but I can make ProRender do what I need it to do for now where Cycles just baffles me. Thanks again.

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    $\begingroup$ Eevee should give you exactly what you want, since it's also a rasterizer. Can you explain what doesn't work with Eevee? $\endgroup$
    – Robert Gützkow
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 20:35
  • $\begingroup$ Hi Perry, I'm getting decent results in Eevee with your file, but I had to crank your spotlight way up and adjust a few other settings. Your materials are not named so I'm not sure what's supposed to be reflective, etc) and you have a point light inside the object, but it's not labelled. Can you post a picture of what you were hoping to achieve using Blender Internal? $\endgroup$
    – Copperplate
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 21:00
  • $\begingroup$ @rjg: eevee has very bad reflections. They're smeared or have faces missing. This obvious on other files I have but I'd like to get information on this one first. $\endgroup$
    – Perry Babin
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 21:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Copperplate: I'm new here. Is there a way to show me what you did. I couldn't get the transparent material clear along it's length (probably because it was only transparent for a very shallow depth). $\endgroup$
    – Perry Babin
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 21:48

2 Answers 2

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Either crank up your samples or try denoising with AI or Photoshop / AfterEffects. The former takes a little longer to render, the latter produces artifacts at times.

I am not too sure about the current implementation of denoising into cycles, but there is an addon called dnoise you could try out. Otherwise go into the "Properties" Editor, into the "Render" Context and and put a higher value into the "Render" textfield under "Sampling".

The thing is, that Cycles does a lot more realistic calculations than BlenderRenderer ever did, so it takes longer to produce a clean result...

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  • $\begingroup$ I don't know if Blender is concerned about non-artists using Blender but if I had come into blender after 2.80 was out, I would have been discouraged by the difficulty to get a clean result. Blender Render was simple but produced absolutely perfect results (perfect transparency, reflections, shadows...) for what I need without worrying about noise or other problems. I will try dnoise if there are no other solutions on getting clean results. Going back to 2.79 may be the only solution for the simple (non-animated, mostly technical) that I need. I haven't given up on 2.80 yet. $\endgroup$
    – Perry Babin
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 22:27
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    $\begingroup$ If you could give it a second thought, I would love you to take back the down vote. Also, please do not insult me by telling other poeople that I do not have any skills. I actually work as a 3D Artist. My boss has a different stance on this. :) Back on topic: I merely gave two options, but I also said that the second options is worse, so I really dont get why you are so mad... $\endgroup$
    – morph3us
    Commented Aug 15, 2019 at 13:07
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eevee-64-samples

Hi Perry, linked is your file with material setups for EEVEE and Cycles. This is by no means the only way of doing this, and you will see I have a few different setups available for the glass material. I won't be able to host the file indefinitely, so be sure to download it ASAP. You will get good results in Cycles by turning the sample count up and using denoising as I have it selected in your file. Currently it's 256 samples but it really should be more like 1024 for this shot. In the EEVEE shot above, it's 64 samples and a lightning quick render. To keep the highlights from blowing out, I used Filmic, High Contrast, and 0.8 gamma in the Color Management settings. Different scenes can use different settings. It still looks good even with the default "Standard" view transform and "None" look.

I fixed some issues with the gray end caps by setting shading to smooth and then enabling "auto smooth" on both of them from the Object Data > Normals panel.

Here is the .blend file. Included HDRI is a free file from HDRI haven here. I hope this helps!

-Adam

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  • $\begingroup$ One other note is your glass piece is intersecting the green gasket rather than being flush up to it. This allows the gasket to be seen more clearly, but it could potentially cause flickering (z-fighting) issues if an animation was ever made. $\endgroup$
    – Copperplate
    Commented Aug 15, 2019 at 22:02
  • $\begingroup$ Also, for this lighting setup, turning ambient occlusion ON doesn't really make much difference. However, it's something you will almost always want to use with EEVEE. I find rendering a scene with Cycles and then opening it in Blender's image editor is helpful, so I can compare the Cycles render side-by-side with EEVEE and make needed tweaks to match the two render engines. $\endgroup$
    – Copperplate
    Commented Aug 15, 2019 at 22:06
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    $\begingroup$ It most certainly helps. Having to do so much and know so much more to render an image will prevent a lot of casual users to lose interest. While it may be possible to get better results with more advanced rendering engines, getting good results with the old internal render engine encourages people new to blender to continue to learn more about it. I understand that this may seem like whining but I see it as a newbie to a very interesting piece of software, not as someone immersed in the art/graphics world. Thanks again. $\endgroup$
    – Perry Babin
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 1:22
  • $\begingroup$ You are welcome, Perry. I actually find Cycles pretty straightforward especially when you use the Principled Shader, and it's actually easier to get great results with little effort. You can learn more about that shader from Andrew Price's BlenderGuru site and YouTube channel. If you want to learn more about Blender in general, and prefer "organized" learning, then I'd encourage you to try out CG Cookie. They have a lot of great series on there which will help expand your knowledge of Blender. It's not perfect, but overall it's a very good experience. $\endgroup$
    – Copperplate
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 3:49

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