6 Quick Blender Tricks for Faster, Better Renders: by Blender Decoded

If you’re looking to optimize your Blender workflow and create better renders, Rob Dickinson from the Blender DECODED YouTube channel shared a video where he shares unconventional tips that help you improve rendering quality while reducing render times. Let’s break down these useful hacks, perfect for any 3D artist familiar with Blender.

1. Speed Up Volumetrics with Emission Shaders

Volumetrics are great for adding depth and atmosphere, especially in outdoor scenes. However, they’re slow to render and can cause blown-out lighting. Rob’s solution? Fake volumetrics using an emission shader:

• Create a cube, assign a low-density emission shader, and apply it to the volume.
• This gives you similar atmospheric effects at 40% faster render times.

This trick is a lifesaver when you want fast, high-quality renders without taxing your system.

2. Mist Pass for Quick Depth

For scenes where volumetrics aren’t ideal, Mist Pass is an excellent alternative. This allows you to fake depth without slowing down your renders:

• Enable the Mist Pass in the View Layer tab.
• Adjust the mist distance to create a gradient effect, adding a sense of depth to your scene.

You can even tweak this effect in post-production, making it super flexible and easy to use.

3. Fake Holes with Specularity

Need to add a hole but can’t afford to mess up your geometry? Rob suggests faking it by tweaking the specularity:

• Turn the specularity to zero, creating a "virtual vanta black" that absorbs all light.
• This method effectively fakes depth without adding complex geometry, making it look like a real hole from all angles.

This is particularly useful for objects where modeling actual holes would disrupt the geometry.

4. Fix Waxy Photo Scans

Photo-scanned textures can sometimes look too shiny or waxy due to baked-in highlights. Here’s how Rob solves this:

• Reduce or remove specularity on photo-scanned objects to eliminate the excessive shine.

This small adjustment gives your models a more realistic, matte appearance—perfect for photorealistic scenes.

5. Let More Light Through Glass with Shadow Rays

Blender’s standard glass materials often block too much light, leaving your interiors dark. Rob shares an easy fix:

• Use a Light Path node to mix a transparent shader and shadow rays, allowing more light to pass through glass without sacrificing realism.

This trick not only makes interiors brighter but can also speed up render times when dealing with complex lighting scenarios.

6. Billboards for Massive Scenes

Rendering thousands of detailed objects, like trees, can overwhelm your system. Rob recommends using billboards for large scenes:

• Use flat, 2D images that always face the camera to simulate 3D objects.
• Add color variation to these billboards using an object info node for a more realistic effect.

This technique is perfect for large environments where you need to balance detail with performance.

Final Thoughts

Rob Dickinson’s Blender DECODED YouTube channel is packed with valuable insights like these, offering creative solutions to common Blender problems. By incorporating these hacks, you can reduce render times and still achieve professional-quality results.

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