Heading
Rendering for computer graphics is like the oven is for baking. It's the process of taking all your ingredients (3D models, shaders, lighting, animation, etc.), setting the oven temperature (render settings), and waiting for it to finish "cooking".
With computer graphics, rendering takes the form of finalizing 3D elements into image or movie format. As you can imagine, the higher the quality, the longer it takes to finish rendering. So we have to ask ourselves "How fast can we get this scene to render with the least noticeable drop in quality?" Rendering really boils down to the art of compromising. And this course explains fundamental concepts of Cycles so you can understand how to make the best compromise.
