Cycles Renderer Alternatives

Cycles Renderer is described as 'Cycles is Blender’s ray-trace based production render engine and in development since 2011. It was originally developed by Brecht van Lommel, and is maintained by an active team of developers today. Since its release as Apache 2' and is an app. There are more than 10 alternatives to Cycles Renderer for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, Blender and Autodesk 3ds Max apps. The best Cycles Renderer alternative is LuxCoreRender, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Cycles Renderer are Adobe Dimension, MoonRay, V-Ray and RenderMan.

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Alternatives list

  1. LuxCoreRender icon
     31 likes

    LuxCoreRender is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Based on state of the art algorithms, LuxCoreRender simulates the flow of light according to physical equations, thus producing realistic images of photographic quality.

    46 LuxCoreRender alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  2. Adobe Dimension icon
     14 likes

    Versatile 3D design tool combining asset compositing and photorealistic rendering with real-time previews. Access Adobe Stock seamlessly and enhance with Photoshop for practical workflows.

    57 Adobe Dimension alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Adobe Creative Cloud
     
  3. MoonRay icon
     3 likes

    MoonRay is DreamWorks Animation’s in-house 3D renderer, used to render all DreamWorks movies since How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  4. V-Ray icon
     10 likes

    V-Ray for 3ds Max is a complete rendering solution, which combines the power of the well-known V-Ray award-winning production rendering engine with the flexibility and exceptional speed of the interactive rendering system V-Ray RT and the even more impressive new V-Ray RT...

    47 V-Ray alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Rhinoceros
    • Autodesk 3ds Max
    • Autodesk Revit
    • Sketchup
     
  5. RenderMan icon
     10 likes

    PhotoRealistic RenderMan, or PRMan for short, is a proprietary photorealistic RenderMan-compliant renderer.

    Cost / License

    • Free Personal
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  6. Mitsuba icon
     15 likes

    Mitsuba is a research-oriented rendering system for forward and inverse light transport simulation. It consists of a core library and a set of plugins that implement functionality ranging from materials and light sources to complete rendering algorithms.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  7. Malt icon
     2 likes

    Malt is a fully customizable real-time rendering framework for animation and illustration. Designed as a community effort to expand the possibility space of 3d rendering, it provides graphics programmers and technical artist an enjoyable “shadertoy-like” workflow inside Blender...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  8. Indigo Renderer is an unbiased, physically based and photorealistic renderer which simulates the physics of light to achieve near-perfect image realism. With an advanced physical camera model, a super-realistic materials system and the ability to simulate complex lighting...

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  9. appleseed icon
     10 likes

    appleseed is a modern, open source, physically-based rendering engine designed to produce photorealistic images, animations and visual effects.

    52 appleseed alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  10. AMD Radeon™ ProRender is a powerful physically-based path traced rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  11. OctaneBench® icon
     2 likes

    OctaneBench® allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. This provides a level playing field by making sure that everybody uses the same version and the same scenes and settings. Without these constraints, benchmark results can vary a lot.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  12. Octane Render icon
     7 likes

    Octane Render is the world's first GPU based, un-biased, physically based renderer. What does that mean? It uses the video card in your computer to render photorealistic results fast...really fast. This allows the user to create stunning works in a fraction of the time of...

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
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