Blender Render VS Cycles Render (for teaching)

[Ken Murphy]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently teaching a Blender course at my home university for the fourth time.  I'm midway through the course right now and teaching Cycles Render for the first time.  Personally, I prefer Cycles for most things but I'm finding that it's quite a bit harder to teach to students--so much so, that next year I'm considering going back to Blender Render.  Does anyone have any experience with this or an opinion as to which approach might work best?

Thanks,

Ken Murphy

SMSU Planetarium

[Michael Hess]

Hum, it's a tough choice. In the long run going with Cycles is better because it leads to a better mastery of Blender, but the learning curve is steep, and the skills involved are vastly different. Since using the node editor is a necessity for better renders for Cycles, you can hold off on introducing Cycles until you start talking about the Node Editor. I would introduce the Node Editor when you start talking about advanced texturing and composite editing. That would be a natural transition and lead in into Cycles. I would not forgo teaching Cycles because skill needed for Cycles are necessary for further development. I hope that helps.

[Ken Murphy]

Yeah, that's maybe the best approach, start them the simpler Blender render and then graduate up to Cycles when they are more ready to grasp it.  We are mid-semester and I've been holding off on the node editor and have been working entirely from from the properties panel when it comes to materials and textures.  We will soon be introducing the node editor.

[Ron Proctor]

I say go full Cycles. Teaching it is the best way to learn it!  :)

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 6:51:23 PM UTC-7, Ken Murphy wrote: