Render Filters in Blender 3D

By Thursday January 14, 2010

Render Filters in Blender 3D
Render Filters in Blender 3D
I was watching some of the videos on the Creature Factory DVD I bought from the Blender e-store.
The DVD is essentially a a walkthrough of how creator Andreas Goralczyk made a short video form start to finish all in Blender. I’ll do a more thorough review of it later, but I just wanted to post on one of the little golden nuggets of info I picked up while watching.
Andreas mentions that he does not use the default render filter in Blender, which is set to “Gauss”. I didn’t even realize there were different filters until I heard him say that.
I had just posted my sword project recently, so since I had it ready at hand, I decided to do a couple of tests. To get to the filter, you go to the Scene tab (press F10). The filters pulldown menu is circled in red:
In the video, Andreas mentions using the “Mitch” or “Catrom” filters. First I rendered the sword using the default Gauss (as I have been doing for years now):
Previously this has always been ok, if not excellent, to my eyes. Next I switched the filter to Mitch:
As you can see, it’s much sharper and crisp. I really liked this one, but still I decided to do a Catrom:
And this one is even more crisp than the Mitch filter. I have now changed my default filter to Catrom (by saving my default setting from the File menu). Sure there may be occasions where you will need a softer render, but you can always switch it back at that point.
Anyway, I’d recommend playing around with it and seeing how it affects your renders.

I was watching some of the videos on the Creature Factory DVD (UPDATE: I guess you can’t buy this DVD anymore? It’s unfortunate because it contained a lot of good info) I bought from the Blender e-shop.

The DVD is essentially a a walkthrough of how creator Andreas Goralczyk made a short video from start to finish all in Blender. I’ll do a more thorough review of it later, but I just wanted to post on one of the little golden nuggets of info I picked up while watching.

Andreas mentions that he does not use the default render filter in Blender, which is set to “Gauss“. I didn’t even realize there were different filters until I heard him say that.

I had just posted my sword project recently, so since I had it ready at hand, I decided to do a couple of tests. To get to the filter, you go to the Scene tab (press F10). The filters pulldown menu is circled in red:

The scene tab with render filter circled.

The scene tab with render filter circled.

In the video, Andreas mentions using the “Mitch” or “Catrom” filters. First I rendered the sword using the default Gauss (as I have been doing for years now):

Sword rendered with Gauss filter

Sword rendered with Gauss filter (click to see larger)

Previously this has always been ok, if not excellent, to my eyes. Next I switched the filter to Mitch:

Sword rendered with Mitch filter

Sword rendered with Mitch filter (click to see larger)

As you can see, it’s much sharper and crisp. I really liked this one, but still I decided to do a Catrom:

Sword rendered with Catrom filter

Sword rendered with Catrom filter (click to see larger)

And this one is even more crisp than the Mitch filter. I have now changed my default filter to Catrom (by saving my default setting from the File menu). Sure there may be occasions where you will need a softer render, but you can always switch it back at that point.

Anyway, I’d recommend playing around with it and seeing how it affects your renders.

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2 Comments
  1. Jimmy from virtual store layout
    Twitter:
    on Jan 8, 2011

    My only problem with those filters are their names. There is no way i am going to remember a bunch of undescriptive names for the filters in a 3d rendering program. I wish the filters could be named intuitively, i would be much more likely to actually use Blender 3D for

    • JG
      Twitter:
      on Jan 9, 2011

      Yes I agree. I had no idea what those meant until I saw it in the video, so I never would have tried it out.

      The UI and naming conventions had traditionally been a very weak point with Blender.

      With 2.5 the UI is vastly overhauled, but I don’t think the names really changed, unfortunately.


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