Cycles: Light Paths

Bart · September 6, 2011

Curious about the inner workings of Cycles, Blender’s new GPU renderer? Brecht offers some insight into the behavior of light.

Author Bart

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.

16 responses

K M

6 September 2011 at 15:24

Cool! You used my image! :)

Aclariel

6 September 2011 at 15:24

Woohoo FIRST !! :-D

Thanks a lot Bart for this article.
I was looking for something like this.

Cycles looks really promising !

Aclariel

6 September 2011 at 15:25

@KM LOL Posted at same time !
Ok, you win first post :-D

claas

6 September 2011 at 17:24

I am not sure if it might make sense but maybe at one point
we should think about an OSL WIKI for Blender.

yudhir

6 September 2011 at 19:08

A quick Look at the WIKI and I seem to understand the way it works…Thanks

Making invisible Mesh Light..or Emitter object..

Small Scene setup http://www.pasteall.org/pic/17544
Rendered http://www.pasteall.org/pic/17545
Node setup for invisible emitter http://www.pasteall.org/pic/17546

Just A quick Setup ..Please Check all nodes..necessary or unnecessary

Matt

6 September 2011 at 19:24

What is the point of having rays coming from the camera?

Ron Proctor

6 September 2011 at 23:32

Laser-mirror-lens render, please. :D

Jurel

7 September 2011 at 04:48

I’ve downloaded the last cycles build from graphicall, and I haven’t been able to find out what the new holdout closure really does and how to use it, does anybody know?

Thanks for floating point pixel support!! 2d composite with cycles have a lot of sense now!!

eMirage

7 September 2011 at 05:46

how to make transparent shadows for alpha textures with this?

Jurel

7 September 2011 at 07:29

I’ve downloaded the last cycles build from graphicall, and I still don’t understand what the new “holdout closure” does or how to use it. Does anyone knows?

Thanks for floating-point pixel support!!!! now 2d composing with cycles have a lot of sense :)

zomby

7 September 2011 at 09:44

Will cycles produce rainbow if narrow light beam pass through the prism?

Sanne

7 September 2011 at 12:32

zomby, not at the moment. I hope dispersion will be in Cycles at some point, though.

zomby again

7 September 2011 at 16:31

Clear. It would be a useful feature.

Janez

8 September 2011 at 00:36

@Jurel

holdout is a mask. Or at least it acts as a mask…

Jurel

8 September 2011 at 04:04

@Janez

Thanks! looks like holdout is always rendered as transparent pixels.

Marco

8 September 2011 at 08:13

I am using Cycles for architecture visualization.. It’s completely amazing! With his full Blender integration, realtime 3d viewport update, realistic shadows and light bounce, NOW I JUST need Blender for ALL my graphic purposes…

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