Cycles is better than you think... by Turpal Alex Saytiev - Blender Conference 2024

[@SpencerMagnusson]

For those wondering, the thickness output (as of 4.2) is only used for Eevee to fake refraction. It's not used by Cycles.

[@Starlit-Music]

It was most likely added by the modeler so they can use eevee to preview what they're modeling as they're modeling it.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

@@Starlit-Music oh absolutely, it was purely for their previewing the general look as they modeled.

[@Optimus97]

Also used for subsurface scattering in Eevee

[@YounesSS-p8v]

The way AI is used here is exactly how it should be, to help artists improve and achieve better results, not to replace them entirely, which is what we fear.

[@israrwani2659]

goated statement

[@SSS333-AAA]

exactly what i've been saying. ai is the concept and idea generator, it is the thing that gives loose suggestions, it's not the final producer. the biggest problem with ai is that people do not use it properly. these guys use it properly, these guys are fucking cool. also younesSS i like your profile picture, very cool.

[@mementomori7160]

Yup, that's the best use of AI, inspiration and guiding, not doing work for you

[@JC-bm3zo]

it's inevitably moving in the direction you fear , i fear it too .... and it will get there in a year or two , we should accept that fact and adjust our careers accordingly before it's too late ...

[@LeoMastroTV]

@@JC-bm3zo that's just a stupid statement made by someone who listens to tech bros who have no idea what they're talking about. You quite literally need artists for the AI to even work. Without us real artists, you couldn't feed the algorithm database with real art which is then being stolen. What you meant so say was "We're right now in a wild west time of algorithms because it's so new that copyright laws and laws in general haven't been able to keep up. Wait a few years and we will get a few new laws about copyright because the work of millions of artists is quite literally being stolen without them being paid a single penny. It's like the domain bubble in the 90s and early 2000s. It will be over and a new bubble will appear." So, if you have no clue about something... just don't say anything. Oh and btw. don't listen to tech bros. They where always without a single exception wrong.

[@raynerhandrian1486]

The fact it free already enough for me, but when it getting better every interation is outstanding dedication.

[@drukcg]

My world changed thanks to Blender! Regardless of if i get clients or not, which can make my journey a bit more fulfilling, I enjoy the adventure I am on using it. I want to thank the entire community, the endless tutorials, the creators behind it and even the drag and droppers with millions of likes on tiktoks or instagram; thanks for sailing our worldwide ship xD. Don't mind my crazy. haha

[@theftking]

Cycles isn't better than I think, because I think Cycles is the best.

[@sh1elds_tv]

octane.. redshift lmao

[@oBCHANo]

If you think it's the best it's because you're ignorant.

[@sh1elds_tv]

@@oBCHANo fr

[@sh1elds_tv]

@@oBCHANo I personally think cycles looks like dog water

[@smallhat1]

@@oBCHANo dang dont be rube some people think its the best i think its really good for a render engine and its free

[@xanzuls]

Even tho there are things around cycles that are still missing like deep rendering, MIP mapping etc., it's still a fantastic renderer compared to Arnold, Vray, Redshift etc. and probably the fastest too from my experience. A lot of people who are new to 3D use Blender and lack experience working with other 3D DCCs and renderers, so when they don't see movie quality renders coming straight out of Blender, they think it's because of Cycles's being not good enough for producing photoreal renders like other commercial render engines, when they lack good lighting, composition, proper color management, compositing and professional color grading etc. I mean, Cycles was made by Brecht Van Lommel, who was one of the lead devs of Arnold, I think he knows what he's doing.

[@cyrkielnetwork]

Cycles is considered bad because it's free and it's used by begginers so if you compare average Cycles render to average Arnold, Octane etc. Cycles will look bad, because those renderers are expensive and used mostly by professionals.

[@poopiecon1489]

Up vote for this 🔥

[@ajtatosmano2]

As a whole, Cycles is very good. But quality wise, some other renderers have a slight edge. They need less tweaking and usually retain more details. The last example is great for illustrating this: corona or octane with the same textures would have much nicer details on the floor for example. The one they ended up using looks very video-gamey. And the light distribution is often is a bit nicer, which is hard to quantise, but if you tried them you would know that in cycles you need to be more specific with the light angles, sizes, strengths, while with other renderers often moving the sliders once is good enough already....all that being said, I still prefer cycles, because it's almost as good, faster (wihtout optimization), much more stable and very flexible.

[@yasunakaikumi]

@@cyrkielnetwork it used to be bad before the Cycles X and the recent rebump features. it was slow to render compare to those render engine you mentioned. but now a days it's quite near to octane with still about 30-40% missing features from those paid guys that is used for optimization to render big scenes. I always use Cycles for small scenes but since the optimization features to render big scenes is still kinda not there, I still stick on my Octane license, I think Mipmapping is the biggest one that everyone was been requesting for larger texture scenes to save some vram.

[@rennightmare]

I'm not too much into compositing, what are the pros of deep rendering comparing to position pass which can be used in comp to interpret sequence as a point cloud in 3d space?

[@InfiniteLightAura]

the separate renders is also so clutch, never thought of that

[@DimiArt]

I still don't understand how it's done

[@dzibanart8521]

@@DimiArt you can render different collections separately , for the mouse for example you just turn on indirect only on the outliner, or remove it completely, you render it, then render the mouse on its own over a transparent background, and you just combine both in compositing.

[@draco6349]

really though! i know exactly what he means by lights "fighting over" a pixel, because of how samples are calculated- but i had never considered just... rendering them separately so they wouldn't, and then using a simple image blending operation between layers to just stack them.

[@dzibanart8521]

@@DimiArt I forgot to mention you do this with render layers. that way everything is automated you just have to press render button once.

[@DimiArt]

@@dzibanart8521 Can you make a tutorial?

[@sandeepsingh-xg1rk]

Hell yeah ,another round of very high quality tutorials :)

[@dasaca07]

5:02 The most complicated node ever created!!!!!

[@SmogyKev]

Absolutely mindblowing, very value able tips

[@dzmigo2649]

I use Blender for all my projects, and it’s amazing to see that Cycles can achieve such incredible render quality 2:40 . I don’t have an RTX 4090, but the speed of Cycles is continually improving. I also love using the denoise feature, as it saves me a huge amount of time on my small personal projects. I hope we live to see Cycles rendering in real-time!

[@ramengod1337]

incredible lecture, so much to learn. I've been following the studio for some time now and was delighted that Alex of all people gave a talk about it and also shared so many insights and the whole thing is accessible to us. Unbelievable.

[@ibotpl]

cycles is fine. like 9/10 no problems in production. but then there comes a job where you want a mist pass from a scene with trees, or render volumes indirect to have their shadows as a seperate layer, enable motion blur for generated instances or want real caustics.

[@alithomaga]

Thanks to share your experience with us!

[@justinlloyd3]

I was using the magnific trick at the last company I was at. It was a powerful workflow.

[@nathanpotter1334]

As a long time cycles enjoyer, it is indeed superior.

[@andreybagrichuk5365]

Fantastic presentation, just Fan Tas Tic !!!

[@ShohSlaought-hh6qe]

Cocacolastic man🤝😁

[@suprovfoysal]

Amazing, it's free but come with superpower.

[@aman34587]

instead of magnific we can also use free and open source ai models like flux with some controlnet in something like comfyui for free which will give more control and better results but it requires good gpu and some technical knowledge. and for editing, compositing , colorgrading, sound design davinchi is goat. and for 3d stuff you know allready

[@antoniopepe]

really interesting workflow. thanks for sharing with us !

[@OUTTHEMUDVISUAL]

I love blender ! Cycles is amazing

[@swek_c137]

Letsgoo ,Happy Bcon24 🔥

[@gurratell7326]

Instead of talking about stone AI program that isn't Blender (there's other platforms for that) I would really have liked to see way more indepth about those light layers, how they're setup and clear comparisons in noise and render times compared to a single layer render. And also a bit more on your comp denoising, is that Blender, Davinci or something else? :)

[@thzockt]

This is truely amazing

[@philiphanhurst2655]

I'm very conflicted on the use of AI, but that tip definitely seems like one of the better uses of it. But personally I'll probably still avoid it out of principle, and also because I'd much rather learn from the more deliberate details of a better artist's work than whatever a machine learning algorithm can hallucinate. Still though, it's a decent idea.

[@GlitchDude]

The big benefit is that it generates results in the context of your scene, and you can't always find real references that work for what you're doing, plus even if you can, the difference in the time taken becomes the big benefit I absolutely think this type of referential usecase will be the norm in the future, even clients can use it to visualise what they're looking for, for the modellers they hire, and this applies to a lot of other content creation jobs too. Making these algorithms the "middle man" is a great direction to head in, instead of trying to make end results through them. We can make work faster and more straightforward without necessarily sacrificing job positions this way

[@True-VFX]

Unironically by using AI you likely are learning the more deliberate details from a better artists because those details and artists works were used in the training of the AI. Honestly with something like magnific in particular you’re no longer just generating from nothing. You need to input your own image as the prompt and then it works on that. It’s technically (or was) an image upscaler. But they added some hallucinations into the algorithm and gave people a slider for how much to let it hallucinate. We looked at it a while ago to upscale some of our old texture sets we lost the higher res versions of and it worked very well as just an upscaler. Better than topaz would.

[@GastonGock]

Ya idk it’s definitely a shortcut. These are all pretty basic details you learn in environment concept art or environment art. I think everyone needs to be a multidisciplinary artist to succeed, but if these new artists aren’t interested in learning about architecture, how wood gets polished with time and wax, etc then idk if their work Will be interesting with it without ai

[@blenderheadxyz2418]

Cycles is awesome. The quality in relation to rendertime is amazing. I was surprised they dont use denoising, but do it in comp. I wonder what they use ?

[@memeycorny7773]

since they mentioned aftereffects, im guessing they use magic bullet looks denoiser

[@blenderheadxyz2418]

@@memeycorny7773 have to look into that

[@heckensteiner4713]

Cycles kicks ass. Gets better with every update. I would like see an easier/more automated temporal denoising. Yes, it could be done in compositing, but for me, the less I need to do in compositing, the more time I save.

[@MichalKruszyniak]

It's amazing to see how You approached the render in separate render passes like all "big boys" do on big budget films... !!!! Marvel - want spent less - use BLENDER !!! :D

[@Teckstudio]

Great presentation, awesome work! 🤩

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Very interesting talk. I really thought that nothing shot was from some other e fine. Remember seeing that ad. I do think the title of the speech is perhaps a bit misleading. I was kinda baffled about the teaser, magnificent work! Also very interesting method for the lights. Yet I wonder how they comp that. Because most times you use the passes. Overlaying so much details, parts start blowing out. I mean in some of the layers, we also see details which are also in other shits

[@Aent6]

Awesome talk

[@edinspiegel]

that ai trick is crazy - works so well! and I feel like is exactly how ai should be used - not to make the end result - but as inspiration / feedback - awesome!

[@coltynstone-lamontagne]

Yeah I live using ai as an ideas tool

[@thenorthorch]

Amazing job!

[@willemb]

Very good presentation!

[@robertYoutub]

One of the big Problem in CG is, that we get forced that beauty is perfect by the clients. i fought many battles and always clients ruin realism out of fear making things not beautiful enough. However the same thing counts for design, yet you can divide good designers from bad, by check how much someone dares.

[@SFtheWolf]

even as someone very critical of the ethics of the ai marketing blitz I don't see a problem in using the output as reference images; artists reference completed works all the time. if anything the bad part is giving a company money for stealing content from smaller creators.

[@warcat3d]

Only other issue to me is that there’s not much reason to be using ai as reference when there’s so much more value in somebody just learning how to properly use real reference

[@Spacebar-3D]

Great insight, thanks!

[@funnyberries4017]

Love the render times. I have a 3060TI, and can get scenes to 10 seconds a frame pretty easily

[@noname60195]

Amazing

[@AllExistence]

Basically, using AI like this is like having personal teacher who makes improvements to your work so you can see where your messed up and what to do to make it better. More or less.

[@whispermusic3522]

you just shared my secret sauce lol, no but honestly thanks a lot for sharing this I also believe that Cycles is way better than what people think and I love octane also that workflow is terrific specially with USDs now you can import particles or geometry with attributes from Houdini and you are golden I am still not comfortable with karma as much as I am with cycles so it does make a difference I also think cycles should implement a few more things to make our lives easier such as deep rendering, more AOVs or a revisited motion blur system but now with all the progress it made I think those are negligible

[@nelsonduarte3573]

amazing talk

[@Enderpearl213]

great educational video for a beginner like me

[@MaruHieta]

Very cool ideas. Gotta start using AI to level my Blender skills!

[@InfiniteLightAura]

such a great presentation, really love how he articulated how once we get to the end of a piece we can compliment it with other tools / add-ons etc

[@nidhu595]

'course it isn't, I LOVE cycles

[@pajalixd4016]

I thought for a good second that this video was gonna be about steroids but then I looked at the profile picture of those who produced it...

[@FlameForgedSoul]

0:55 Compare the amount of "getting started" and "for beginners" training free or paid, to real High Level/Deep Dive/OMFG You Nerd level training available for Blender. When the most lucrative work to be had using Blender is...teaching people to use Blender it's no wonder this perception is the norm. Everyone being blown away by _lighting passes_ and basic compositing is telling. You my friend are one of a handfull of Exceptions Proving the Rule. Props for the "correct" AI use, nice to see people Getting It.

[@AnonTen]

ironically, this presentation is literally cycles slander, showing how artists get around the renderer choking on different things

[@SaHaRaSquad]

You think people aren't using tricks in other software and that paid programs just spit out everything perfectly?

[@AnonTen]

@@SaHaRaSquad no

[@cazmatism]

@@AnonTen All he showed was the standard industry pipeline way of rendering and the fact that he in fact did not use any workarounds.

[@ganerot147]

AI is good so long as it doesn't steal your data

[@Vlow52]

Better than you expect but worse as required. The problem with cycles is: you can achieve high end photoreal quality, but it takes a lot of post just because it’s light is not physically corrected. Compared to Vray and Corona it simply loses in every point Exocet fit the nodes.

[@desireschool]

this guy should see the mega light in unreal engine 5.5 :)

[@onur.nidayi.1344]

Nice talk !

[@spydergs07]

I love Blender, but we have to be honest. Houdini is the best of the best of when it comes to simulations. Blender simulations are a bit of a pain and nowhere near as fast as Houdini.

[@Moctop]

I don't think anyone challenged this, and the talk is about Cycles. I wish Karma gets as fast as Cycles at some point.

[@yasunakaikumi]

well, that's an offtopic.

[@BraineZVisuals]

ALEX SAYTIEV ‼️‼️‼️

[@Vysions]

my goat

[@SW-lw6mt]

Cycles is great for lot of things, organic objects like realistic skin and hair not so much - overall Arnold still wins. But cycles is getting better all the time.

[@subsurfs123]

3:16 PLAMET OF THE APES REFERENCE (the window)

[@highhill-bq9pq]

"BCON 24" ❤

[@vickyfikri4063]

now thats, how we should use AI

[@baguspurnomo5145]

BLENDER ALways BEST than any studio Standar software

[@MzaM]

Can you really call that "being trained by AI"? What's the real different between that and learning by looking and observing real references. I would say looking at real life references can teach you way more than the AI because you are looking at the real thing and with the AI you are looking to an interpretation.

[@imiy]

I need a tutorial on how to render lights separately

[@calilifestyle]

NICE

[@punithaiu]

I primarily use 3ds max + vray. Correct me of im wrong. Isnt the method he mentioned seperating different light groups and rendering different images, same as just adding render elements in vray(or most other engines). And adding them later to get the beauty pass? Or we can just add back to beauty element and it automatically seperates emmissive mats, light groups, reflections, refractions, environment and so on.

[@xanzuls]

I think render elements are just render passes in Vray if I'm not wrong, where here he's using light groups to put certain lights in groups (which is a relatively new feature in Blender) to be rendered them separately and put them back together in comp.

[@punithaiu]

@@xanzuls yes, we add different render elements to render corresponding passes along with beauty render. And there is one render element named "back to beauty" which basically creates all the passes automatically. For light grouping, there is something called Lightmix. I use it to render day and night scenes simultaneously. You can turn off/On any lights,emmissive matetials, change intensity,color after the render is complete and save variations. And whichever lights you turn off will also affect the underlying passes. So you can have all the passes for each light combination switched ON/OFF.

[@punithaiu]

I was just surprised that rendering different passes was a new thing..I mean it's a method used from decade. . I thought blender already had something similar to render elements to automatically render the passes.

[@xanzuls]

@@punithaiu render passes are not a new thing, but that's not what he was talking about when he was talking about rendering out lights separately, as I think he used light groups in blender and light groups are a similar feature to lightmix in vray. Blender has render passes, and you can choose to render them under the 'view layer' panel.

[@punithaiu]

@@xanzuls thanks for clearing that up.

[@SanOcelotl]

So they use AI for generating a refference? I think its faster to just open Google images

[@Tweedledee__]

True, some of the things AI did was just tell them to stop being basic about Texturing and actually texture with a story.

[@pong4289pan]

Is ACES colorspace necessary for a Blender animation workflow?

[@ivanraimi5524]

the AI tool gonna use your work (renders) to train their data lol. just give your raw render to a compositor to finish the shot

[@TheBlackBaku14]

people who whine about AI will be completely replaced by people like that who have talent and who are not afraid to use technology intelligently to their advantage. It is just a tool but in this case used really well

[@mytube001]

I recently learned that Cycles is intended for fast, efficient, semi-realistic animation rather than for highly realistic stills. That explains why it's severely deficient in some realism areas. Cycles is nice, but lacks things like spectral light (no dispersed light in refractions), light-sourced reflections (try making a disco ball - it doesn't work!) that massively take away from the ability to create realistic images.

[@qualia765]

that makes sense but could u share the source?

[@StupidWaluigi]

Pretty sure you just have to set the "Filter Glossy" value to 0 dude. Filter Glossy makes bounced light less reflective and more blurred. Resulting in what you are saying here.

[@Ydstyle.713]

My idea is Blender new update is AI tools add and fast

[@IGarrettI]

I dont think anyone doubts cycles anymore at this point. This whole "IS blender good enough?" mindset is outdated

[@shortdesign]

Taking idea from ai amazing

[@Mini_Lev]

i feel so old, wise and smart watching this video to the end

[@CodeVertPro]

How to render separately and combine into one image?

[@adithyakiran6756]

to render seperatly, easiest way is to make collections for different objects and manually render them separately. to combine them back u can use photoshop or after effects, or even davinci. u can even use blender's in built compositor.

[@CodeVertPro]

@@adithyakiran6756 I think I need whole tutorial for this. I still don't have idea what if first image overlap all lights of second image

[@Benjamin-vx2ot]

i really wonder how do you combine thoses diff. renderers?

[@vinay0arts]

Magnific Stock 📈📈📈🤣

[@acidmerph3670]

10:25 help me find the article, please!

[@softcrm8713]

and what will happen if you compare it to real time rendering, lumen f. e. ? You cant keep up what that

[@redgunn3r]

This info is really good thanks!

[@thatwasgaming6225]

well i have been using blender for a while and literally today before watching this video i knew why pros dont use blender. because it has so many bugs and problems

[@GlobalFacts_3D]

what is that diffuse texture used for Light called? 6:06

[@r1pperuk]

This is how i use Ai. Work in tamdem with it to make my work better. Ai is amazing at somethings but very bad at doing exactly what you need.....so for now we work together but how long until im not needed is the big question.

[@TrackLab]

The AI Approach is nice advice, however this company mentioned is closed source, offers not a single free account, and is utterly overpriced...almost 40 dollars A MONTH for the CHEAPEST tier with very limited generations, is not worth it for private people.

[@edh615]

Generative AI slop... I do not want a shitty filter over my renders, this kind of workflow will be made fun off in no time.

[@dannybcreative]

They're only using the AI to generate references, not applying the results as a filter to the actual image. The AI is just iterating through ideas that the artist/s can then pick and choose when improving the image/animation.

[@magma5267]

That AI talk is actually fucking life changing, anyone that ignores it and is ignorant to it will suffer and fail I've never seen a better use of AI, thank you for sharing this.

[@martinmckee5333]

I have a boss who is "all aboard" the AI train and keeps pushing us to use AI for everything because he's convinced it will make us more efficient. This is precisely how I've found it works best for me. I use AI mostly for writing and having it summarize, rewrite, and expand my writing has led to some fantastic ideas... it's been rare that it actually generated text I wanted to use, but it's like another set of eyes that can look at your work and reformulate it instantly (or near enough). That sort of different viewpoint is an amazing advantage.

[@xzernio9647]

Yes, AI should be used as an advanced tool for inspiration, not as an art-theft tool

[@guromenst4416]

It's not theft Is fan art theft to you?

[@xzernio9647]

@@guromenst4416 is fan art copy pasting the original art?

[@alex.nolasco]

at some point, you won't need cycles....

[@Anthe.cr3]

very nice unfortunately, cycles is still far behind industry standard renderers offering true photorealism

[@Passifly]

So, where is cycles better? Yes, it good enough, but not so well as really production tools as rs/octane.

[@blockshift758]

16:13 midjourney doesn't make from image from nothing it uses millions stolen art

[@ushakovkirill]

LOL

[@scproinc]

Still not as good as 3DS Max or Maya. Good thing this trash will never become the industry standard.

[@berkaygungormus4208]

LOL

[@firstnamelastname-jt5ci]

they all look the same bud down to the GUI

[@Ashandle]

''Cycles is better than you think...'' then showing some AI generated images... C'mon guys. Atleast stick on the topic.

[@dannybcreative]

I agree. The talk was kind of cool, and I did appreciate how they're using AI to iterate through ideas. However it seems like he got started on the topic of Cycles' abilities, only to quickly pivot into a talk about generative AI. I feel there is so much more about Cycles and how to really optimize and improve output that he could've spoken about instead of AI. Bummer.