Questions tagged [cycles-render-engine]

Cycles is a ray tracing render engine that can be used to achieve photo realistic results in Blender. It was introduced officially in 2.61. Use this tag for any Cycles related posts.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
285 votes
4 answers
566k views

Can Blender render pngs with the background transparent?

I would like to render an animation as a series of .png images with transparent backgrounds for use in a video. Is this possible?
A Wild RolandiXor Has Appeared's user avatar
121 votes
2 answers
42k views

Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images

To get images that seem more photorealistic, not only a much wider Dynamic Range is needed, but also having the color information desaturate towards white as it would happen in an overexposed ...
user avatar
107 votes
1 answer
45k views

What is a BSDF?

The term "BSDF" is common in Cycles shaders such as "Diffuse BSDF" and "Glass BSDF" but is not present in all names ("Emission" and "Mix Shader" are two such examples). What exactly is a BSDF?
wchargin's user avatar
  • 9,412
96 votes
3 answers
236k views

Enabling GPU rendering for Cycles?

I want to enable GPU rendering, but there is no option in User Preferences > System: Why is this? How can I get cycles to render using my GPU?
88 votes
2 answers
83k views

How is Cycles different from Blender Internal?

How does Cycles work and how is it different from Blender Internal? Which is better?
gandalf3's user avatar
  • 156k
86 votes
9 answers
119k views

How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?

I know that this question is a bit old or maybe overdone, but I'm running the latest edition of Blender and when I use the Cycles engine I get really fuzzy results and I can't find a simple, non-...
person27's user avatar
  • 1,297
71 votes
4 answers
105k views

Render just part of a final image from Cycles?

I'm using an older Nvidia chip that hates running viewport renders, and I need to check if changes to the materials on a few objects not far from the center of my scene are (I'm rendering a floorplan ...
Kyle Willey's user avatar
  • 1,943
66 votes
3 answers
379k views

How do I put an image texture on a material in Cycles?

I am creating a model of a glass and I would like to put a drawing on it (a png picture). I know how to do it using Blender Render, but not with Cycles Render. Help :)
bluszcz's user avatar
  • 763
59 votes
5 answers
29k views

How do I create repeating patterns with cycles' procedural textures

Most people's question in this area is how to reduce repeating patterns, however I want to create them. I'm creating 2d rendered tiles for my game, and I want to create procedural materials for my ...
Enetheru's user avatar
  • 693
58 votes
3 answers
32k views

Making a Laser in Cycles - Straight Beam of Light?

I am modeling a laser pointer in Blender, but I am not sure how to make the laser's light beam. The Spot light comes the closest to what I am looking for, but its starting diameter is 0, and you ...
Stephen's user avatar
  • 5,669
54 votes
3 answers
6k views

Creating Inky-looking characters in Blender

I'm involved in a project to do with ink animation and experimentation. I found this incredible piece of animation: Chinese Ink Style Animation I originally thought this was some sort of After ...
Jacob W.E's user avatar
  • 541
51 votes
8 answers
121k views

How can I create a water material in Cycles?

I'm creating a scene with large amounts of water that will be readily visible, containing refraction and at various angles. The scene is an indoor long-course swimming pool, about 50 meters, all of ...
nanofarad's user avatar
  • 2,886
50 votes
6 answers
50k views

How to illuminate the darkness inside glass objects in Cycles?

My model has a clear plastic (or glass) dome with objects inside. The objects appear dark. I've tried the glass shader with color 100% RGB, with very small IOR, and using just a refraction shader. ...
DarenW's user avatar
  • 3,119
49 votes
2 answers
89k views

How to create a mirror shader?

I would like to know how to create a physically correct mirror material in cycles. How can that be achieved as realistic as possible? From Wikipedia: Mirrors are manufactured by applying a ...
p2or's user avatar
  • 15.5k
49 votes
7 answers
81k views

How to blur a texture node in cycles material?

For a Cycles material I need to blur a texture. If the texture where a Texture Image node, I can blur the image before adding it but in my case I need to blur a Voronoi Texture and so I can't do it. ...
PhoneixS's user avatar
  • 1,864
47 votes
3 answers
25k views

Iridescence In Cycles?

Is it possible to create an iridescence shader in Cycles? Specifically for something like DVDs, soap bubbles, engine oil, etc..
gandalf3's user avatar
  • 156k
47 votes
3 answers
27k views

Control Cycles/Eevee material nodes and material properties using python?

How can I define the different properties of an Cycles/Eevee material? Such things as glossy, glass, diffuse, RGB-color, emissive via python scripting?
binaryBigInt's user avatar
  • 1,037
45 votes
10 answers
43k views

How to reduce fireflies in Cycles?

I often use Cycles' built in Glass BSDF shader to achieve realistic refraction effects, but in many cases, it seems that Cycles' glass caustics creates an unfortunately large number of fireflies (...
Gwen's user avatar
  • 11.6k
45 votes
2 answers
19k views

How do I convert materials from Blender Internal to Cycles?

I know this may be a tough or confusing question, but I have numerous existing materials I created and reuse for a project, which were all prepared for Blender Internal. Now, I want to start the ...
A Wild RolandiXor Has Appeared's user avatar
44 votes
3 answers
58k views

How to make a cycles light emisson object invisible to the camera?

In my scene it is required to position the lights close to the main object like this: How I can make the light source invisible to the camera?
p2or's user avatar
  • 15.5k
42 votes
3 answers
296k views

How to merge vertices in Blender?

I am attempting to create my first 3D character just for practice. Being one of my first 3d models I going through the learning curve needless to say. In doing so I find myself creating many extra ...
SKIPPY's user avatar
  • 549
41 votes
3 answers
35k views

How can I make a material only apply to a side of a plane?

How could a one-sided material be achieved with the Cycles renderer? I would like to create a plane that is completely transparent from one side, and a mirror from the other side. It would be cool ...
horace's user avatar
  • 657
41 votes
1 answer
31k views

what can you call from the attribute node?

I know you can call density or flame for example from the attribute node. I was wondering what else you can write in the name slot. And maybe a bit of explanation of the attribute node. thanks in ...
Leo Yfver's user avatar
  • 553
40 votes
1 answer
48k views

How to assign a new material to an object in the scene from Python?

How can I assign a new material to an object in the scene via Python?
binaryBigInt's user avatar
  • 1,037
40 votes
4 answers
6k views

Aliased edge around light source in cycles

Often when a mesh light is visible in the camera, the edges are not anti-aliased. No matter how many samples I do, the lamp border always looks jagged and pixelated. Is this a rendering error? How ...
Greg Zaal's user avatar
  • 10.8k
40 votes
2 answers
48k views

Is there really a way to make a true toon shader material in Cycles?

Is there a way to make a true toon shader material in Cycles? Here's, in order of importance, what would be ideal to find in such a shader: Must use Cycles Must be an actual shader Must not rely on ...
Poyo's user avatar
  • 1,585
40 votes
2 answers
43k views

What is branched path tracing and how is it useful?

I noticed recently that there is a new option in Cycles for "branched path tracing", can someone explain what this does in easy to understand terms? Should we expect faster render times or less ...
comeinandburn's user avatar
39 votes
2 answers
14k views

How to give an image or video a TV screen effect?

I thought it would be interesting to create a .blend that filters any regular video or image with vintage television look. Edit: Although this question initially arose from my desire to create a ...
Mentalist's user avatar
  • 18.8k
39 votes
1 answer
103k views

How can I render an object with an hdr background?

I have an object with an hdr for the background. What do I do in Cycles to render the background with my object? How is this different from an ordinary render in Cycles? The hdr is a big one, 350MB.
Leonardo-Paradox's user avatar
39 votes
2 answers
21k views

How can I create a convincing sea material in Cycles without using the ocean modifier?

I'm trying to render a sea scene animation, but using the ocean modifier and huge subdivisions isn't feasible due to the large scale. Luckily it's a calm sea and seen from quite a distance, but there ...
cybrbeast's user avatar
  • 2,388
38 votes
2 answers
6k views

How to make a holographic reticle shader in cycles

Does anyone have a lead on how to set up a shader in cycles to mimic the behavior of hologhraphic sights in blender, as shown in this image? I don't want to have to try and figure out exactly how to ...
AlbinoPanther's user avatar
38 votes
2 answers
195k views

How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake

I created a interior scene and i don't know how to bake a texture using cycles bake.
Sachin Vani's user avatar
36 votes
3 answers
6k views

What does the simplify AO bounces value do?

I recently discovered that turning on Simplify in the Scene panel, and setting "AO Bounces" to 2, reduced my render times from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. A three times speed improvement! But... I still ...
Andrew Price's user avatar
  • 1,269
35 votes
3 answers
75k views

Make a gold reflective object

Brand new to blender, and I'm trying to make a metallic object that is reflective. There are lots of tutorials on youtube, however none of them are compatible with blender 2.71 with the cycles render....
spuder's user avatar
  • 1,223
35 votes
1 answer
6k views

How to make a "reflective tape" material in cycles?

How can I make a cycles material that gets very bright when a light is shown on it, yet still has normal colors? I'm talking about the "Retroreflective sheeting" that can be seen on road signs, the ...
David's user avatar
  • 48.9k
35 votes
2 answers
41k views

How to Construct a Diamond or Other Gemstone Material in Cycles

What would be the material or shaders node set up for a smooth gem in blender cycles engine? I want a result similar to this image:
user avatar
35 votes
1 answer
12k views

How to make 3D LUTs and use them in Blender?

Now that I understand a little bit more about how to work with Wide Dynamic Range workflow , scene referred datas and OPS(ASC CDL) node, I'm asking myself how to go further and create my own 3D LUT ...
Mareck's user avatar
  • 1,944
34 votes
4 answers
27k views

How do I create a reflective white material?

I'm pretty new to this and this is my first question here, any help would be greatly appreciated. So basically what I want to achieve is a floor material as seen in this photo... ...the reflections ...
user1163818's user avatar
33 votes
3 answers
12k views

What is the difference between the displace socket and a bump map?

Aside from the fact that you can control the bump mapping per shader with a bump node, are there any differences between these materials? As far as I can tell, they are the same. Is the displacement ...
gandalf3's user avatar
  • 156k
31 votes
3 answers
21k views

What is Dot Product?

I am doing this Blenderguru tutorial on Making Fire and at some point he is adding the Vector Math node Dot Product to his material. And he says that he does not understand what he is doing but this ...
user avatar
31 votes
4 answers
14k views

Blurring/Feathering a Procedural Pointiness Mask

I'm trying to create a procedural mask to affect the sharp edges of my model using the Pointiness output from the Geometry node, ...
Hexbob6's user avatar
  • 2,038
30 votes
3 answers
17k views

How to animate noise texture "seed"?

It's possible to animate a change noise texture by animating the texture coordinates with a mapping node or by animating the texture space, however this only works on one axis at a time (on the other ...
gandalf3's user avatar
  • 156k
30 votes
1 answer
10k views

How do I emit light from inside a object?

I need to know how to make the buttons in my blender project look the same as in this photo. Mine all look pale, even with the emission material. Is there anyway I can get my buttons like this?
Borat Sagdiyev's user avatar
30 votes
2 answers
12k views

How to create Bokeh circles?

How can I render bokeh circles? Nothing I do seems to work. I tried using an empty as the focus point for a cube, with some point lamps in the background with about 2000 strength, but it doesn't ...
jamius19's user avatar
  • 493
30 votes
2 answers
15k views

Difference between Add Shader and Mix Shader?

What's the difference between Add Shader and Mix Shader nodes with the Cycles rendering engine? I know that Mix Shader gives you more control over the material ratio, of course, but are there any ...
Gwen's user avatar
  • 11.6k
30 votes
3 answers
31k views

Cycles: Shadeless "Shadow-catcher" Material for Rendering onto Footage

I am superimposing CGI over video footage, and have run into a problem in making materials for objects that act as 'shadow catchers'. Essentially I want a shader that is shadeless—like an emitter—but ...
Jollywatt's user avatar
  • 415
30 votes
2 answers
16k views

Can Cycles renders be done from the command line?

It seems that Cycles is mainly built in the form of Python scripts (as far as I can tell). Is it still possible to use Cycles to render a .blend file from the ...
A Wild RolandiXor Has Appeared's user avatar
30 votes
3 answers
21k views

Node for setting render colour, regardless of lighting

I'm trying to make a material node setup to set final render colors, regardless of lighting conditions. Is such a setup possible?
ajwood's user avatar
  • 10k
30 votes
1 answer
3k views

Physical iridescence in Cycles?

Having recently seen the Siggraph paper A Practical Extension to Microfacet Theory for the Modeling of Varying Iridescence, I of course said to myself "I have to have this in Blenderrrrr!" and started ...
Mentalist's user avatar
  • 18.8k
29 votes
2 answers
7k views

How can I create Light Streaks in Cycles?

I'm trying to make a light paths like there: To achieve this light threads (streaks) I used a particles emmiter with shining icospheres and motion blur shutter like Andrew. I got this result: First ...
Ilya Kanatov's user avatar

1
2 3 4 5
177