Blender 2.61 is out!

[angelize]

I've been experimenting with Cycles I had a bit of playtime with some materials and image textures. One thing though I noticed that Cycles doesn't seem to work with pngs with alpha at least not yet. There is a workaround though on BlenderNerd to apply alpha transparency to an object using the nodes. So far though I haven't found a way to render a transparent back ground, the RGBA setting is there but it doesn't work yet. Maybe in 2.62 ?

Here's my first test render with Cycles

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Nice job, Frances

Cycles seems to look more photographic, but it's a hard distinction to put into words. As you get closer to objects, Cycles seems to look more natural in terms of lighting, etc.

It is a bit frustrating that there are two different set-up methods depending on which renderer you want to use. I liked the old method of applying textures... it was very intuitive. With the node system, it's often NOT intuitive. Still, I am sure things will continue improving and all these concerns will be put to rest.

Very frustrating is the lack of Normal Map support. Using Normal maps, we can get very 3D looking textures without much overhead at all. With Displacement maps, we have to sub-divide the object(s) quite extensively and this increases render times significantly.

Peace and Merry Christmas

James

[angelize]

Here is the same test render from Cycles with a little compositing done in Xara. some depth of focus and a vector frame and a bit of text. I find it so much easier to do the compositing in Xara.

[guyke]

Frances and James, you're geniuses.

I had a brief look at 2.61 cycles and I am totally frustrated. I understood the materials and textures interface reasonably well (not in all details, but anyway), but now I'm totally lost.

A simple example - I have a sphere and wat to apply a seamless tile - twice in the vertical direction and 4x in the horizontal direction, and I want the mapping to be spherical.
Fairly simple in the previous version of Blender but I wouldn't know where to start with cycles...

I will put a question on the Blender forum to see if there is any help (documentation, tutorials, ...) for newbies like me that want to start with cycles. I have the Blender for Dummies, but that's 2.5 based so I can stil use it for modeling and probably animating, but when it comes to materials it is outdated.

A frustrated Blender user... I might have to change my signature for the time being

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello Guy

Yes, and you are right.

Without unwrapping the sphere, I can't see a way to tell Blender (for Cycles) that there is a spherical mapping needed.

Still, if you're using the Blender Internal renderer, everything still functions as before.

I still want to do some experiments (as time allows) and see what I find concerning this very topic (necessities for mapping textures for Cycles). I have a feeling that (so far) it will have to be through UV coordinates. ie. unwrapping

Hang in there!

James

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Nice job, Frances

I agree with you...Blender and Xara together make a formidable team!

Peace and Merry Christmas

James

[guyke]

A useful link I got thru Blender Artists forum:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/show...utorial-Series

It links to 7 tutorials on cycles

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Do.../Render/Cycles

is the wikipedia manual

and a blender Cookie link :

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/09/...render-engine/

Have fun !

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello Guy,

Doing the mapping was no problem... just use the automatic unwrapping options and do it that way. Then load the image into the UV Editor and position. Remember that you have to also load the image at the materials editor and set Vector to UV Coordinates.


Blender 2.61 w/ Cycles

...but I still don't have it figured out yet about applying Normal (likely impossible at this stage) or Displacement (likely) from an image. That's next!

Peace

James

[wizard509]

Looks good Frances, I'm chomping at the bit to get back into it and hopefully learn to do it right this time.