How to Choose the Right Render and Material Settings in Cycles Render (Blender)

Step-by-Step Guide

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   Step 1: Change your render Engine at the dropdown-menu where it says "Blender Render" and select "Cycles Render";

   If this is an old .blend you might already have assigned materials and want to click on "use nodes" in the material settings Otherwise add a new material Now things are getting a bit confusing because of the number of different combinations.
   
   The best way to get used to this system would be to memorize which shade gives which effect and mixing & optimizing them by textures and Mix
   - nodes (which you should know from the compositor)., On 0 it will render until Esc is pressed "Bounces min/max"
   
   "Transparency min/max"
   
   "Diffuse"
   
   "Glossy"... are for the tuning  if the result is still very noisy it might have something to do with all the Glossy materials you set up in the scene and might get better if you adjust these values "Performance/Acceleration structure" has some settings which are essential for animations like "cache BVH"
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   Step 2: Materials are now node-based

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   Step 3: so start by splitting the window

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   Step 4: setting one to node-editor and clicking on the material-icon of the new window

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   Step 5: if it isn't selected by default..

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   Step 6: After you have experimented with the new materials and probably set up a few lamps by adding an Emission shader to a mesh (most likely a plain out of the camera-sight) you can tweaking the render-settings: The only new setting is ether "Interior" or "Sampling" and "Light Paths" depending on the version of Blender you use "Samples:Render:" is the number on which the render time depends most.

Detailed Guide

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