Render engines

CC-BY Peter Kemp, 3Dami
Step by Step: B3D101
In this tutorial you will learn about render engines.

  • Watch the video or,

  • Follow the step by step instructions below.

Blender has 2 main render engines: Evee and Cycles. Evee is a bit like a game engine. Cycles is a render engine, a path tracer, and is a bit more precise.

Changing engines

In Blender if you go to the Render Properties on the right,

../../_images/blender-render-prop-28.jpg

You can change the render engine. By default it is set to Evee.

../../_images/blender-render-engines-select-28.jpg

But you can change it to Cycles.

../../_images/blender-render-engines-list-28.jpg

You will notice that with Cycles it takes much more time to render. First it becomes a bit pixelated but slowly it gets better.

Cycles tries to emulate each ray of light bouncing around your scene. A bit how light works in your own house or garden. With Cycles your image looks (slightly) better.

CPU - GPU

If you have a good graphics card you can have Cycles use your graphics card. On the Render Properties on the right you can select the Device: CPU or GPU.

../../_images/blender-device-28.jpg ../../_images/blender-cpu-gpu-28.jpg

  • Select GPU.

Your scene will be rendered on the Graphics Card. Sometimes this is faster than on th CPU.

Render

To render your image,

  • Select Render -> Render Image from the menu on top.

    ../../_images/blender-render-image-28.jpg

You will notice that a new window opens. It can take quite a long time to render an image using Cycles however the quality can be better.

  • Set the device to CPU

  • Render the image.

  • Then set the device to GPU

  • Render the image again.

Which one is faster, the CPU or the GPU?