Helicopter Gunship with Blender and Cycles

This Gunship was modeled in Blender a while back. I managed to get the new Cycles render engine working today.. so pulled out this model and started testing it with this renderer.


For more about Cycles go to the original announcement here

these the awesome looking renders i got in a few minutes

1)glossy material


2)glass material


Heres a video that shows the viewport render speed of the render engine


QUICK HOW TO:
To get started with using Cycles(without any knowledge of how to compile your own build) heres what you need to do:

step1 (Update: you can now use the regular Blender build..it has cycles built in)
go to Graphical and download the zip file for your os
(linux, osx and windows builds available)


step2
change the lower viewport shading mode from wireframe to "rendered"


step3
you should see the monkeys start rendering.. if not
update your graphics drivers. refer to the forums for problems. basically if you see a black screen in the render viewport.. then its a problem with your drivers. i had this issue on one of my machines, but once i updated the drivers, it worked fine.


step4
when you load your own models.. nothing will render with Cycles until you set all the materials and lights to use "nodes"(see screenshots below)


for materials check in the materials properties tab
and for lights check in the respective properties tab