The engine enabled by default to display scene content is Eevee no matter the Viewport Shading mode. To use a different engine option, click the Render properties button and from the Render Engine drop-down menu at the top of the panel select Eevee, Workbench or Cycles. The 3D View will immediately update appropriately.
Looking at the same scene rendered live using Eevee (above top) and Cycles (above bottom), shadows, shading and lighting differ significantly, especially where they they might affect or be influenced by, transparent surfaces, layered transparency in particular. Although Blender 2.8 uses the Eevee engine by default it is possible to set Workbench and/or Cycles instead.
To do this, start Blender and make sure to be using the ‘factory’ *.blend file (userpref.blend), this loads in all the initial presets, settings and options, including a Camera, Cube and Lamp in the 3D View. In Render properties set the Render Engine as described above, e.g. Cycles, and then from the File menu click Defaults then Save Startup File - File » Defaults » Save Startup File.
What is Cycles Render? It is an open source rendering engine that can produce high quality and photorealistic results. Once the Cycles Render option is selected, parts of Blender User Interface will change to reflect integration with this render engine. When Cycles is selected as the renderer, there are some notable differences in the various options from the default internal render.
Cycles can take advantage of modern graphics cards or GPU (graphics processing unit) to do the rendering. With a modern graphics card used, the rendering speed can be very dramatically improved. Some GPUs can be many many times faster than CPU when it comes to 3D rendering. To have the power to harness the GPU for rendering, supported graphics card must be installed.
Below picture shows a GTX gaming card installed on a desktop PC. Under Compute Device, select available options. Select the intended GPU rendering mode, followed by the appropriate graphic card from the displayed list.
One of the advantage of using Cycles is that it allows for Realistic realtime preview in the 3D Window. To do that, in the 3D window, set Viewport Shading to Rendered. Ok, there are 2 more things to do. At the Sampling Tab, Render Samples denotes the number of samples that will be used to do the final rendering. That is all.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
When I first learned Blender, I didn’t even know what a render was. It took me a while to finally crack the code and create my first render. This article is weeks of trial-and-error, reduced to simple, consumable steps.
What is a render? Rendering is like walking into your 3D scene with a camera and taking pictures. And then saving those images (renders) so you can use them for whatever you want. The rendering engine is what does the work. It performs a bunch of intense calculations to figure out how light would bounce around your scene, what would be in focus, etc.
In Blender, there are 2 rendering engines. The first one is called Eevee. It’s very powerful and it gives very fast results, but it’s difficult to get those results to look fully realistic. You may have used the Material Preview mode in Blender. This uses the Eevee engine along with some default lighting to give you a real-time look at your materials. It’s not possible to render images from this view.
The other one (my favorite) is called Cycles. It gives you the ability to render perfectly realistic images-it’s just not as fast as Eevee. A basic scene
Switch to the Cycles rendering engine. You can change it in the Render Settings here: Switch to Cycles. Now, make a new Blender file to mess around in. Delete everything it comes with. You’re going to learn how to set this up from scratch. Then add a new Monkey. Press enter or click to view image in full size
Add a Monkey. There are 2 things you need to have ready before you can render your scene. Lighting A camera.
First, we’ll look at lighting. Set up lighting. This guide is not about lighting-so I’ll be brief. You can’t see anything in your render if you don’t have any lights. It’s like being shut in a room. With the light off. At night. It’s impossible to see anything.
In Blender, it’s easy to add a light: SHIFT-A > Light > Point. This gives you a Point Light. A Point light gives off light in every direction. You can adjust the strength of the selected light in the Properties Panel. Place your new light above the monkey (anywhere else is fine too), like this: Press enter or click to view image in full size. Put the light above the monkey. Now, in the 3D viewport, press Z then 8 to switch to Rendered view. This shows your scene, rendered using the selected rendering engine (so Cycles.)
Press enter or click to view image in full size Not bright enough. It’s a bit dark. Open the Light settings (keep your light selected) and crank up the Power: More power. That’s better!
Set up a camera. Press SHIFT-A again and add a Camera. Now, hit 0 on your numpad to toggle the camera view. The lets you “look through” your camera-you’ll see what it sees. If you hit 0 again, you’ll go back to normal view. To position your camera, you need to activate Lock Camera To View. This is easy: Press N to open the N panel, open the View tab, and tick Lock Camera To View. Turn on Lock Camera To View. Now, hit 0 to look through the camera again. Since Lock Camera To View is on, you can navigate the view as usual, and the camera will move with you! When you have the camera where you want it, uncheck Lock Camera To View. Do NOT forget this! ↑ You can also position the camera more precisely using G and R like you would any object.
Set up the render. Now it’s time to mess with the Render settings. Open up the Render tab in the Properties panel (the same place you went to change the Render engine.) The basic settings are divided into 2 sections: Viewport and Render. The Viewport settings only affect what you see in the 3D viewport. The Render settings will affect the actual rendered image. Focus on 2 things: the Noise Threshold and the Max Samples. The Cycles engine works by sampling the image repeatedly, making it better each time. After the first sample, the image is very fuzzy (“noisy” in Blender terms), but after 100 samples it looks much better. The Noise Threshold tells Cycles how much Noise you’re OK with. Once there is less noise than this, Cycles will finish rendering. The Max Samples value limits the number of samples so that Cycles doesn’t go on rendering forever, trying to make it better and better. Once the image has been sampled this many times (or the amount of noise is below the Noise Threshold), Cycles will stop the render.
By default, the Noise Threshold in the Render section is much smaller than the one in the Viewport section, and the Max Samples value is much larger. However, 4096 is a lot of samples. Lower it to 1024 (more than enough for this exercise!) Why those numbers? Cycles (so I’ve been told) works best with powers of 2. So values like 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 4096 are ideal. Another thing to remember is the Denoise checkbox. If it’s turned on, then after your render is completed, Blender will try to remove any remaining noise (fuzziness) from the image. By default, this is turned off for the Viewport. Try turning it on to see it in action!
Render! You’re almost ready to render! You just need so check the Output settings. Open the Output Properties: You’ll see the resolution settings at the top, which is how big your rendered image will be. Scroll down to the Output section. The file type is set to PNG by default (this is fine), and the output directory is set to some random, buried folder (this is bad). Click the folder icon to change the output directory to a folder you’ll remember (like your Desktop.) Now you’re ready to render! In the topbar, choose Render > Render Image. Do not close the window that pops up, or you’ll cancel the render! Just wait for it to finish. Watch the little bar in the bottom of your main Blender window to see how far along the render is. The Render Progress bar. When it’s done, there’s 1 more step: saving your image. Open the Image menu in the Render window and choose Save As. Save your image! By default, it’ll try to save it in the directory you picked earlier (but you can choose a different location if you want.) And…save it!
Recap Here’s what you learned: What a render is; What a rendering engine does; How to add lights to a scene; How to position the camera; What the Noise Threshold and Max Samples settings do; And how to render an image. Now, go try this out on another Blender scene! I’ll answer any questions! If you've built a scene in Blender and you're staring at the viewport wondering how to turn it into a finished image, this is that guide. This guide covers exactly one thing: producing a single rendered still image from a Blender scene, start to finish. It doesn't cover animations (frame ranges, output sequences) or fine-tuning render settings for speed and quality - those are separate guides, linked below where relevant.
Blender's render command lives in two places. At the top of the screen there's a Render menu - click it and you'll see Render Image. Faster: the keyboard shortcut F12. Both do the same thing: Blender looks through the active camera, calculates the final image using your current engine and settings, and opens a new Render Result window to show it. Before you render, Blender is already using one of three built-in render engines, set in the Render Properties tab (camera-back icon): EEVEE, Cycles, and Workbench. Workbench is meant for fast viewport-style previews while you're modeling and laying out a scene, not for a finished image - so for a first real still, the practical choice is between EEVEE and Cycles.
Cycles is a physically-based path tracer - it simulates how light actually bounces around a scene, off surfaces, through glass, into shadows. EEVEE is a real-time engine, closer to what runs in a video game. It renders fast because it takes shortcuts - approximating reflections, shadows, and light bounces instead of simulating them. For your first still image, either engine works - the practical difference is how long F12 takes, and how materials like glass or metal look (Cycles handles those more convincingly by default).
Resolution X / Y at the top sets the pixel dimensions of your final render - that's what F12 actually renders at, not whatever size your viewport window happens to be. File format, further down the panel, sets what kind of file you'll end up with. PNG is the default and a safe first choice - it's lossless, and it can save a transparent background, but not automatically: you need to turn on Film > Transparent in the Render Properties tab, and switch this panel's Color setting from RGB to RGBA. Skip either of those and PNG renders with Blender's default background color instead. JPEG is smaller but compresses the image and can't hold transparency at all.
One thing that trips people up: pressing F12 does not save a file by itself, and there's no setting that makes a single still auto-save - the Output Path field (below the Format section in this same panel) only kicks in for animation renders (Ctrl+F12), where Blender writes every frame to that path automatically. Blender's viewport has a shading mode called Rendered - the sphere icon on the far right of the shading row at the top of the 3D viewport (or via the Z pie menu). It's genuinely useful for checking materials and lighting as you work, but it isn't a render. Pressing F12 is different: it renders at your actual output resolution, strictly from the active camera's point of view, producing one fixed, final image that won't change until you render again.
At this point you should be able to open a scene, pick an engine, set your output resolution and format, hit F12, and save an actual image file. If what you actually need is a sequence of frames instead of one image - an animation, a turntable, anything with motion - that's a different pipeline, covered in our animation rendering guide. One thing we've noticed with people past this stage: a single test render on a laptop is one thing, but once you're rendering real project frames instead of test stills, local hardware becomes the actual bottleneck - especially with Cycles on a complex scene.
Best Render Engines for Blender
A: Blender separates rendering from saving on purpose - it lets you inspect the result and compare against a previous render before deciding to keep it. For a single still, save explicitly via Image > Save As in that window - there's no auto-save option for F12 renders. Q: My render looks nothing like what I see in the viewport. A: The most common cause is camera framing - the viewport shows whatever angle you're currently looking from, but F12 always renders from the active camera. A: No - the engine choice only affects how the scene is rendered, not how you build it. A: There's no fixed rule, but 1920x1080 is a common starting point since it matches standard screens. A: For a beginner-level scene, a slow render is usually the engine (Cycles is slower than EEVEE by design) or a high resolution/sample count. A: Yes - closing the window (or pressing Escape) stops the render before it finishes; there's no way to have it keep computing in the background while you do something else in Blender. A: PNG is the safer default - it's lossless and can hold a transparent background if you turn on Film > Transparent and set Color to RGBA first.