Issues with Cycles standalone

Cycles Development
#1

Hi everyone,

I’ve downloaded and built successfully the latest commit (b48e9556e340) of Cycles (both on WIndows and OSX). I can run the application with the samples, but the results seem wrong.
On OSX, I can’t see anything rendering in the window, it just looks all black, although I can save the resulting render using the --output flag on the CLI.
But both on Windows and OSX, the results seem wrong. For example, with the monkey scene, the expected result is something similar to this, from what I can gather:

2364×1386 735 KB

But the result I get is this (can’t upload two images, so dropbox link is what I can do: Dropbox - monkey.png - Simplify your life)

I get this result on both platforms (Windows and OSX). I’ve tried messing around with the sample xml, but even when I get the over-exposure under control (by dialing down the background strength from 8 to 1), the shader on the monkey head still doesn’t seem like glass, and the ground plane is too shiny.

Has anybody experienced this? Am I missing something?
I was interested in using cycles as a offline renderer for a CAD application (export the XML from my own application, then render it using the CLI and getting the resulting image back into the CAD application).

Thanks in advance, best regards,
Diogo

#2

Hi Diogo,
the xml examples are not up to date with the latest changes in Cycles. I wrote the scene_monkey.xml a few years ago, and back then “Hosek / Wilkie” was the default sky model, today it’s “Nishita”. As the used model is not explicitly defined in the xml example, it uses the new one, therefore the overexposure.

Not sure what’s going on with the glass shader, that looks ok from the code. I guess I have to take a look at the examples and update them. :slight_smile:

Also please be aware, that the XML API was written in the beginning of Cycles (before it was integrated into Blender) as a proof of concept and to test the engine. It was never intended as a production ready solution for external applications.

Best regards,
Thomas

#3

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the speedy response, good to know the problem is the samples and not my build. I’ll try to create my own scene then!

In your opinion, it would be better to integrate cycles directly into my application, and setup the scene using the cycles general API, instead of using the XML format?

Best regards,
Diogo

#4

You’ll have much more possibilities by using the general API. XML is not feature complete as far as I remember, not all settings are exposed, and again it was never intended for more than quick tests.

Maybe one day we’ll have something like an Alembic or USD importer for Cycles standalone (I am dreaming here :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:)

You can take a look at the Cycles - Blender integration to get an idea of the API: blender · rB

#5

Thanks for your help!

1 Like
#6

I updated the scene_monkey.xml example file in the cycles git repository, it should render fine again.