Which is Better, Maya or Blender?

In this article, the best CPU & GPU cloud render farm and cloud rendering service provider, Fox Renderfarm, will tell you how to render high-quality images in blender.Top 9 Best And Free Blender Render Farms of 2023With the development of computer technology, Blender has been widely used in the field of graphic design, so that ordinary people also have the opportunity to come into contact with Computer Graphics technology referred to as "CG technology". Computer Graphic Image is also computer 3D animation technology, referred to as "CGI". Whether it is "Toy Story", "The Lion King" or "1917", the success of these world-class blockbusters can not be separated from the establishment of models in 3D software, and then to visual effects, post-production software composition, Editing, and more.Image via blendercn.orgAs a new star in 3D software, blender integrates modeling, sculpting, binding, particles, animation, etc., and is a software that supports commercial creation for free forever. So how do we use blender to output high-quality images?Blender has 2 renderers that can convert a 3D scene into a 2D image.Eevee is a physics-based real-time renderer.Cycles is a physically-based ray-tracing renderer.Use plugins to add more third-party rendering engines. Each renderer has its own rendering settings to control rendering quality and performance. And the rendering effect is determined by the camera, lighting,and materials, which also determine the quality of the output images.Image via blendercn.orgHere is the Cycles renderer that comes with Blender as an example. As a GPU-based rendering engine, rendering effects have become more and more mature, and its speed is much faster than the CPU renderer. So where does it affect the output image quality?SamplingThe sampling method determines how the light is calculated. The light is emitted from the camera into the scene and bounces back and forth until they find a light source, such as a light object, a glowing object, or the ambient background light. Number of light path traces for a single pixel in the final render. The more samples there are, the less noise there will be in the result and the more accurate it will be.Path trackingThe rendering attribute is the amount of light emitted from the camera to each pixel. The view attribute is used for scene rendering in the view. A value of 32 means that each pixel will be tracked by 32 rays.)NoiseNoise in the image will greatly affect the image quality because 32 beams of light per pixel are not enough to produce a high-quality image (To reduce the noise by 50%, double the number of lights, so the rendering time will also double, depending on the computer configuration to set the value, at least 1024 if you want a better effect.Rendering propertiesThe rendering properties greatly affect the rendering quality, try to adjust to the maximum value that the view can reach, and adjust the view back to 32 to maximize the quality.Optical Path LengthIt refers to the value of the number of bounces to track the path of each beam. The difference between 0 and the maximum will be very large.Camera PropertiesCamera size: It needs a proper ratio and size, and the focal length needs to be adjusted according to the content of the image. The appropriate size can display the details of the Depth of field.Depth of field: The choice of lens will affect the depth of field details. The depth of field determines how far away the object will be displayed clearly.Aperture radius: determines how far the object in the radius is clear, and it will become blurredFocus: Focus needs to be adjusted. Set important objects in the image as axes and adjust the appropriate aperture radius to show the correct object to the viewer.If you want to improve the quality of the images, you can try some of the suggestions above. Improving the quality of images is not something that can be improved by reading an article. Continuous learning and practice is the best way.Cycles is undoubtedly a young renderer. Blender is also constantly improving some of the features of Cycles, and it has a lot of room for development in the future. As a TPN-accredited render farm, Fox Renderfarm supports most mainstream 3D software, renderers, and plugins, including Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Clarisse, and more. So if you want to use a renderer other than cycles, you can also consider Fox Renderfarm, which is undoubtedly a powerful, fast and safe render farm. It can easily help you render high-quality images in Blender.Fox Renderfarm hopes it will be of some help to you. It is well known that Fox Renderfarm is an excellent cloud rendering services provider in the CG world, so if you need to find a render farm, why not try Fox Renderfarm, which is offering a free $25 trial for new users for signing up? Thanks for reading!

In this article, Fox Renderfarm, the best cloud rendering provider and render farm, will share with you Pierson Pang's works of stylized cheongsam girl and approximate production process and experience.Pierson Pang is a 3D character designer who has participated in many AAA realistic and stylized projects in Europe and America, specializing in European and American cartoons and realism.© Pierson PangHe mainly uses the software ZBrush and Blender. Use the sculpting software ZBrush with the emerging set of modeling to render in Blender, can maximize the production efficiency.First look at the final result:© Pierson Pang© Pierson Pang© Pierson Pang1. Ideas and Reference CollectionPierson initially wanted to do an exercise in generalizing the female body. He combined Chinese femininity and chose the cheongsam for the costume. But at the same time, he wanted to maximize the female form, so made a little change to the cheongsam's shape. Because there was no specific original drawing, he looked for some reference drawings that fit the image in his mind before making it.He looked for exaggerated anatomical drawings of the form as well as fashion show type for reference, which determined the final direction of the character's temperament. Although there are often improvised ideas in future productions, they are within the larger framework. That's why accurate reference is important, as it guides the right production direction.© Pierson Pang2. Making the ModelCompared with realistic characters, the model of stylized characters requires more general refinement and exaggeration of human silhouette structure and muscle anatomy, and focuses on the overall relationship of sparseness, rhythm and hierarchy of the character. And the stylized character will first discard the irrelevant details.A little advice for beginners:If you want to exercise sensitivity to body type, then you can do a lot of body type generalization exercises at first, including various body types (fat, thin, women of various body proportions).Like the following figure: this combination of deformation through the simplest of spheres will maximize the removal of details, thus focusing all attention on the characteristics of the shape itself. Strengthening this exercise will quickly improve one's ability to capture the shape. The same applies to the character's face, which will be more delicate and faint compared to the larger forms.© Pierson PangBack to the cheongsam girl, Pierson did volumetric generalization on the body shape (elbow joint, knee joint, interpolation generalization between each muscle), emphasizing the contrast between the block structure and the curves of the legs and upper arms.In the profile form, the fullness and curves of the arms and thighs need to be noted.For blocky hair, you need to pay attention to its rhythmic contrast such as sparse and dense layers. The volume structure of the face is mixed with softness and hardness, so it needs to be interspersed to deal with it.Regarding facial treatment, there are various styles of cartoonish block treatment depending on the project.Pierson's way is a combination of soft and blocky interspersed treatment, meaning that there is a sense of breathing. In fact, this sense of breathing is throughout the body in his work. How to grasp the overall rhythm? How to choose the detailed contrast of the specific partial rhythm under the overall rhythm is needed to be carefully examined.© Pierson PangAfter the model is almost done, you can directly use ZBrush to paint the vertex color to observe the character effect.Pierson has always felt that the white model does not represent the end of the high modeling stage. The top color is needed to judge the character's temperament, and painting the top color usually requires learning more about women's makeup. The choice of eye shadow type, the choice of lipstick number, what kind of character positioning and temperament they correspond to, are all very sophisticated and also exercise aesthetics. So you can observe more during your day. The aesthetics of a character's final effect is very important. The software and method skills are all auxiliary. The level of completion of the vertex color can be based on your own preferences, as long as you can roughly express the feeling of the character on the line, or to handle finely, as a base for post mapping.In ZBrush, you can use the skin material ball to observe the effect, as follows:© Pierson PangAfter the Tpose effect is determined, use ZBrush's Transpose Master to give the character a pose, but many people prefer to use DAZ to make it because it is more convenient. Transpose Master is more difficult to pose with, but can exercise dynamic anatomical ability.© Pierson PangPierson usually does not put too much effort into the practice of low-poly modeling and the process behind it, as long as it can express the effect he wants to achieve. Pierson used to paint the vertex color with ZBrush and import it into Blender to render the picture by using the vertex color with the material ball. Of course, it is also possible to draw mapping in a more detailed way to adjust the effect in Blender.3. Blender RenderAbout the renderer, he earlier used Keyshort, V-Ray and such renderers, as well as Arnold, which is used by many people to do realistic rendering. Blender is a free software with less complex material and lighting properties compared to Arnold, including WYSIWYG rendering speed and render quality, which are friendly to stylized characters.Blender has two rendering methods: eevee and cycles.Eevee is Blender's real-time rendering engine, implemented using OpenGL technology to focus on speed and interactivity while achieving the goal of rendering PBR materials. Eevee can be used interactively in 3D viewports and can also generate high-quality rendering.Eevee uses the same shader nodes as cycles, making it easy to render existing scenes. For cycles users, you can use eevee to preview material effects before using cycles to render the final image to improve efficiency.Unlike cycles, eevee is not a ray tracing engine. It uses multiple algorithms via rasterization to estimate how the light acts with the object's material, while cycles is based on physical ray tracing to calculate the bounce of each ray. Although eevee is designed to use PBR shading materials, it is not perfect. Cycles renderer provides physically more accurate rendering, while Eevee uses rasterized rendering so it has significant limitations.Each of these two rendering methods has its own features and can be chosen according to your character rendering needs.You can read the official tutorials for details:https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.3/render/lights/light_object.htmlrenderer-settingsThere are also many Blender tutorials on YouTube, such as:https://www.youtube.com/c/DannyMac3dYou can check out more works of Pierson Pang at at his Artstation:https://www.artstation.com/piersonpangFox Renderfarm hopes it will be of some help to you. We are an excellent cloud rendering services provider in the CG world, so if you need to find a Blender render farm, why not try Fox Renderfarm, which is offering a free $25 trial for new users? Thanks for reading!By Thepoly

Today, the best cloud rendering services provider and render farm in the CG industry, Fox Renderfarm, organized this article for you to learn how to make a beautiful riverside town in 3D.How to Make a Beautiful Riverside TownI want to share with you the beautiful riverside town I made, and give you a detailed introduction to my production ideas, the software and design skills I used.Find ReferenceHow did I find my reference? Actually, when it comes to riverside towns, the scenery of many places in China can be used as a reference. Here I found a lot of references around Wuzhen, which impressed me the most. I found a lot of reference pictures on the Internet, and found a 1.5-hour video of walking around the city on a video website to take a screenshot from it.StylingI first created the basic shape of each building in Blender, that is, the white film, and determined a series of settings such as camera position, focal length, aperture, etc.There are a lot of boards in this scene, which is too time-consuming and cumbersome to place alone, so I chose to use blueprints to control them, place resources along splines, and randomly select meshes, positions, rotations, and zooms, which can improve my work efficiency a lot. In the scene, wood walls, docks, pillars, obstacles, and roof supports can also be controlled in the same way.Creating Template AssetsI made several attempts to create a plank asset for the project. Sculpt them in ZBrush, then topology them in Blender, use auto UV, and texture them in Substance 3D Painter with Smart Materials.The dust above is crafted in the UE to make them look more random and reduce some repetition.After that I created a second set of boards, which are just textured boxes to add variety to the scene and are not used in important places in the scene.Here are the main assets:The RoofThe roof takes up a large part of the scene, and most importantly, the composition of the scene. Even if the number is large, they all have to look rich and also adapt to complex shapes. First, I sculpted 3 tiles of different sizes in ZBrush and broke each of them a little. Based on these 6 tiles, I combined them into a 2x2m tileable mesh. For smaller buildings, this is pretty much all I use. For larger buildings, I just duplicate the mesh and twist it slightly.The subsequent treatment is very similar to the wood treatment, so I won't go into too much detail here.For the top of the roof, I looked at five sets of reference pictures of the roof and copied them. I made another asset pack that also included smaller props and poles for building and dock supports.Separate AssetsOnce the planks and roof have been made, 90% of the scene can be built, and the rest can be done pretty fast, which is just regular PBR process.After that, a simple simulation of the fabric is carried out, and then the texture is drawn. You can adjust the points according to the effect.For the chimney, I used texture displacement. I downloaded the brick and pavement textures from Bridge, made a simple chimney shape from the concept, and applied the displacement to it. Before proceeding, I checked in the engine whether the proportions of the bricks looked right in the scene, and adjusted the UV in Blender if necessary. Once satisfied with the proportions, I apply the modifier and use the Scraper tool in Blender's Sculpture mode to remove jagged edges from the edges. If you find something missing, you can make it yourself or go to the asset mall to download it.Scene ConstructionThen here comes the process of replacing the white film with assets. After the first material iteration, I found that many places were strange and unreasonable, so I made adjustments to some small places.When making roofs, I found that straight roofs are not suitable for medium-sized buildings, so use splines to bend them. Pay special attention to turn off Nanite at this time, as it does not support any type of deformation. You can use some irregularly shaped objects to break its silhouette, but just to remember it should be reasonable in the scene.Post ProcessingThe smoke effect is done with UE. Smoke from the chimney, made with Niagara, has the same settings for noise and fog, increases the initial speed of the wind, and expands with the life cycle, becoming more transparent from start to finish, with colors ranging from dark to light.WaterWater is just a flat surface with a normal map on it, and its UV moves in two opposite directions on the map, creating the effect of water flowing.Then add the effect of ray tracing:That’s all! Fox Renderfarm hopes it will be of some help to you. As a powerful render farm, we are dedicated to providing cloud rendering services in the CG industry. If you are looking for a fast rendering solution for your 3D software, try Fox Renderfarm! We offer a free $25 trial for new users. Thanks for reading!Author: Thepoly