Comparing renderers

[George Ioannidis]

Here are two renderings done in nXt and Cycles (the one with informations stamp). Personally I like both :D nXt did it (1024X768) in about 3 hours and 25 minutes, whilst Cycles needed 1 hour and 3 minutes (for 1000X600). nXt has better overall quality (to my eye), it needs longer time to clean the image's grain though. (done on machine with Athlon X4 640 at 3.00GHz with 4GB RAM WIN7 64bit). Possible solution to this speed handicap may be the use of GPU in rendering calculations... ;)

P.S.

Please don't ask where is the wood material in nXt image :) I forgot to assign the bitmap...

[George Ioannidis]

I'll tell my wife to do it. Windows cleaning isn't my cup of tea :D

nXt is my only renderer for "serious work" (renderings for my clients). All the others are just for fun and for teaching purposes.

[Marc Chaumier]

Hi George, what sort of tool you use to avoid the grain of a too soon stopped rendered image (hard english I know)?

[George Ioannidis]

Hi Marc,

images are "right off the box", no post processes or tools were applied. Just sharpen filter (GIMP).

Too soon stopped? Do you consider 3.5 hours of rendering to be too soon? Well, nXt needed 3 hours and 25 minutes to clean up the grain, Cycles was quicker, but the resolution of image was different (smaller). So the only "real" tool for getting clean images is patience.:D

[Marc Chaumier]

Thanks George, I was thinking about a bluring tool, or something like that... But I think I was crazy in my hope ;o)

[George Ioannidis]

Well Marc, there is actually filter in photo program called Despecle or Remove noise or something similar. I think it is used primarily for removing some dirt and small scratches and dust from old scanned photos, maybe they could do something to enhance grainy images, but on the other hand, don't expect some spectacular differences.

[Jan Verzelen]

no miracles from despeckle. As you can see in the second image detail, sharpness is the first victim of this command.

[George Ioannidis]

Absolutely true, Jan, nothing much to expected.

[Richcat]

Marc, Jan and George have you tried this Neatimage

I downloaded your images and just ran it without any changes and its seems to work well. I have only just come across it and have started to use it with the sketchup version of Accurender, to despeckle any renders.

 (edit don't why its distorted- its ok in preview or if click to enlarge)

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Nifty.  It did clobber the bump map on George's wall material.  Edges do ghost a little.

[George Ioannidis]

Thanks for link.

My despeckled one looks like one of those "polished" "vray-ish" "3dsmax-ish" "super-duper" but "no-life-at-all" renders seen on many "who-knows-where-it-came-from" sites. I like more the grainy ones. My personal taste though.

[Richcat]

Hi George

I'm actually with you, looks like a real photo with the "grain", but nearly every time I have presented a image, I get the "can't you make it cleaner". Maybe people have got too use to the "perfect image", PSing all the life out of it, bright shinny and new etc.

I posted it so if some body was in a hurray and had not got the time to let it cook long enough.

Roy - I did noticed the edges and jpg artifacts, but not the bump map, this is the trial version I'm using so saves as low quality jpg.

 

[George Ioannidis]

Here is another rendering of tea set, this time from Thea render. Took same time as nXt. NXT result looks very well compared to other renderers.