Santa came around earlier this year and brought me a new Video Card and wow what a difference regarding Cycles!
What yesterday rendered in 40 minutes now went down to less than 3. So now I can decently test the new render engine everybody raves about 🙂

I didn’t get too much time to work on my scene but still I got the floor looking nice. I’ll make a different post of the settings and stick it in the “how to” section later if you like it. Though I should improve the bump a bit first.
I also improved the lights. Maybe I’ll go over this again at the end, but so far I’m happy.
I used: one sun, one emmiting glass object with “camera” unchecked in the object panel and two not-so-important emitter meshes in the far side, behind the camera.

I probably picked a tricky scene as I like large windows with views outside – and my first problem, architectural glass, is still not solved, but I am working upon the recommendation of friends and hope I will not have to leave the window frames empty.
I also sadly discovered that you can’t save an image with transparent alpha background – or can you? I was hoping to improve the image outside by compositing it. As to the compositor, it can be still used but render layers are gone so you can just adjust the image, add glow and simple stuff like this. So I just used a plane with the image on it for now, not much control over it though I knotted some nodes but..

I don’t know much about hardware but for those who are interested to know, I got a “gainward gtx580 phantom 3GB” and I think it’s pretty nifty because my Santa is picky.