Blender Master Class

Render Engines: Blender Internal and Cycles

The render engine is how Blender creates a final image using all of the information in your scene—objects, materials, lights, and settings. Blender has two render engines. The older one, the Blender Internal render engine, is a very robust (if slightly old-fashioned) renderer that uses various tricks and techniques to create the final render, eschewing absolute physical accuracy for speed and flexibility. However, this lack of physical accuracy doesn’t mean that Blender Internal can’t render realistic-looking images. It can quickly render scenes with a variety of complex materials to create a final look anywhere between a highly realistic aesthetic and a very nonphoto-realistic and stylized one. This ...