Cycles Render Engine is an advanced, physically-based path tracer developed by the Blender Foundation for use with the Blender 3D software. Here is detailed information about this rendering engine:
Overview
Cycles was introduced in Blender 2.61 in December 2011, aiming to provide high-quality rendering with realistic lighting, materials, and shadows. It uses unbiased, physically-based rendering methods to simulate light paths through scenes, which results in realistic images that mimic real-world optics.
Key Features:
- Unbiased Path Tracing: Cycles employs path tracing to simulate how light travels through a scene, bouncing off surfaces, refracting through transparent objects, and interacting with materials in a physically accurate manner.
- Shader Nodes: A node-based shading system allows for complex material creation, providing users with a high degree of control over the look of surfaces, volumes, and lights.
- Global Illumination: It supports full global illumination, including diffuse interreflections, caustics, and volumetric light transport.
- Support for Multiple Devices: Cycles can utilize both CPU and GPU for rendering, allowing for significant speed-ups when using compatible graphics cards.
- Open Shading Language (OSL): Cycles supports OSL, enabling artists to write their own shaders or use shaders written by others, enhancing flexibility in material creation.
- Progressive Rendering: The render starts with a noisy image that progressively refines over time, allowing artists to see a preview of the final image early in the rendering process.
History and Development
- Initial Release: Cycles was first released with Blender 2.61 in 2011, offering basic path tracing capabilities.
- Development: Over the years, it has seen numerous improvements:
- 2013 - Introduction of volumetric rendering and support for CUDA for GPU acceleration.
- 2014 - Open Shading Language support was added, allowing for more complex shader creation.
- 2017 - Cycles X was introduced, which significantly improved rendering speed and efficiency.
- 2020 - Blender 2.90 released with major updates to Cycles, including new denoising algorithms and better CPU performance.
Context
Cycles was developed to meet the growing demand for a production-quality renderer within Blender, which was traditionally used for modeling and animation but lacked a competitive rendering solution. The introduction of Cycles allowed Blender to be used in professional visual effects and animation studios where high-quality, photorealistic rendering is crucial.
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