Performing a quick / rough render Is there a way to reduce the quality of a render in order to output it quicker? I'm currently using the Cycles Render in Blender 2.79 and find it quite slow on my old machine.

It would be good if I could render something quickly in a lower quality just to get a rough idea of how things will look, before I commit the time to rendering it properly.

The same goes for the real-time 'Rendered' view.

Is this possible at all?
You could try a new version of Blender, in some ways it is more optimized and organised.

Anyway, these steps are similar in all versions


Change amount of samples to around 10-20.
Reduce resolution (size of the output)
Multiply viewport pixel size


This will make your render look really grainy and crappy. Just like you asked.