Why does blender take so long to render if video games in 3D dont?

Question

Simple question I think, how come I can make a simple image in Blendr 3D, and it takes like what seems to be an unreasonable ammount of time to render a current frame, yet 3D games like starcraft 2, world of warcraft, etc, can run smoothly?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Rendering a 3D movie requires much more computer power than a video game does. There are a lot more processes involved in saving a 3D video than just showing a game. Blender will take a long time to render anything if your computer is old.

Answer 2

I am not a blender expert... but my best guess based on what I have seen on blender:

Blender renders 3D objects using a method called raytracing.  Raytracing simulates a light ray entering a scene and bouncing off of everything that is being rendered, it then is able to accurately computer and render the way that light is viewed.  In general it is a much more accurate technique for rendering and allows for you to render things much more realistically.  Any sort of 3d animated movie renders its frames using ray tracing.

Video games simulate 3d enviroments by using textured Polygons. with simple lighting (granted it has made lots and lots of advancement).  The videogame graphics look good and realistic because they take shortcuts by using less polygons and creating textures to fool the eye into thinking an object has more volume than it really does.  Video games also frequently make use of bump mapping which allows you to make your textures look like they are popping off of the polygons.

Think of the difference in work between building a full size marble statue out of marble, and making a cardboard cut out to look like a marble statue.