The Joy of Baking
A bit of background info about the subject matter “The Joy of Baking” — although I made these to compare 3D engines, I thought that it would always be handy to have some images ready just in case a friend have a birthday and I need to send something quickly. These images were made for that purpose in mind. You are free to use them in a pinch if you like.
Technical Renders using Midjourney to compare 3D render engines
Had a chat with someone about the different 3D rendering engines you can specify inside Midjourney yesterday, and I thought that I would do some technical renders, at least from a Midjourney perspective.
Render engine is what’s used in 3D software, as the final step where the models, materials and lights get converted into 2D images. Renderers are algorithms that calculate the physics of light. Calculations are extremely time consuming so they tend come in two flavors, with trade offs between speed and physical accuracy.
- Unbiased renderers. Accurate representation of light. Very slow. Examples: Arnold, Octane, Maxwell.
- Biased renderers. Taking shortcuts for light calculations in order to improve speed. Examples: Redshift, Render Man, V-Ray.
The two types above are offline renderers. Typically you start your render overnight or send them off tos render farms. The advent of gaming and real-time visualization created a need for real-time renderers, so there are now new kinds of biased renderers intended for real-time applications. Examples: Unreal Engine, Blender Eevee.
Because of the speed / accuracy trade-offs, you tend to use them for different things. So in turn, the image training data for the AI engines will somewhat pick up on these effects.
At a high level, the Unreal Engine keyword would give things a more game-like feel with less details, whereas using keywords like Octane Render will tend to have have more physically life like results. It doesn’t mean that one renderer can’t produce results as another type. The ease and workflow is just different, which affects the training data. Redshift is also used in a lot of architectural visualization, but it’s not as physically accurate as Octane. Where physical accuracy is sacrificed, it more than made up for in speed and artistic control. As a point of comparison, Renderman, the 3D engine used to render Pixar films, is also a biased renderer like Redshift. But specifically because it is not “physically accurate,” artists are able to push the visual styles to new heights. What you decide to use ultimately depends on your purpose and artistic vision.
Specifically for AI generation, I prefer the Redshift Renders the best for my purpose. In my opinion, they look the nicest in Midjourney also. I have had less success using Redshift inside Stable Diffusion, possibly because of the training data that they use. So if I try to reproduce this look and feel with Stable Diffusion, I would usually use Octane Render instead.
The Renders
I picked three using the same exact prompt in Midjourney, and you can compare the results yourself. All of these used the same prompt except the render engine is different.
All of these were rendered with very similar prompts, but switching up the 3D render engine in the prompt. Text prompts with Midjourney v5.
Octane Render
Octane Render is an unbiased renderer, and it’s very popular in the industry. It’s very accurate, and it’s used in a lot of movies and TV shows. It’s also used in a lot of architectural visualization.
Because of their popularity and wildly available training data, lots of people like to use Octane Render in their prompt. The quality is good, though I think that there are better options for my purpose.
Redshift
Redshift is a biased renderer, and it’s very popular in the industry. It’s very fast, and it’s used in a lot of movies and TV shows. It’s also used in a lot of architectural visualization.
Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine is an engine originally developed for games, and it’s a real-time renderer. It’s not as physically accurate as the other two, but it’s very fast. It’s also free to use, and it’s used in a lot of games and movies.
