Eevee and Cycles Choose Their Own Separate Paths.
(TL;DR sorta at bottom)
This is going to sound insane even super insane. I however think that maybe Eevee could be for what can be considered an unlimited imagination. With weird, crazy nodes such as glow, edge finding, even Gaussian blur nodes, oil panting nodes. Custom motion blur you choose the object (or select by material), and drag a line (sorta like in alien skin for it but in 3D space. Motion blur trail showing someone's path through a scene but in a static render) and make an object have it. Make a camera have motion blur while everything else doesn't, even go as crazy as to make it where an object has multiple shadows of varying colors without any lights, even shadows that glow, or shadows that you can edit your own way as if you are working with another model. Edge detect for auto grease pencil outlines with the customizability of grease pencils (in 3D space that can parent itself to the object so it moves with the object if you want it to) not just a toon shader, cel shader etc. Camera filters such as double vision, triple vision you choose the number, and of course a dozen other filters. Maybe make the double vision per object. Very hard to do probably though.
I am aware Eevee should be the super-fast cycles if you will. I however think it would be beneficial more so to have a render engine specifically for fantasy, and one for realism. Eevee cannot achieve perfect realism as cycles could and I think that should be embraced and ran with. Eevee could be the ultimate customizable renderer. Trippy worlds would be simple.
I know I know this is insanity to most. I may even be booed for it but there are people who agree with me (somewhere). This could be a community project suggestions etc. What kind of node ideas you want, survey, vote, and then implement the top ones.
Cycles could be the one who runs with realism. Eevee could adopt some of Cycles attributes from time to time, while also doing its own thing. It does not have to be the perfectly realistic super fast Cycles, little sister. I mean if you going to have two render engines why not make them Unique.
I know it would take a lot of work maybe make it for Blender 3 big boy release.
I know I know people want realism these days. Some of us though want fantasy still.
(TL:DR)
Eevee Unlimited Imagination Renderer/Fantasy Renderer.
Random feature list I came up with.
: Motion blur per material or object that can follow a curve.
: Glow materials including shadows.
: Customizable shadows, as in you can even put your own material silhouette, multiple shadows, even give depth to them if you wish.
: Camera filter per object such as double vision/matrix blur.
: Node filters such as gaussian blur, oil painting, cutout out, edge detect, apply effects to edge detect such as grease pencil with all the options of a grease pencil.
These are just some I pulled out of thin air that could really change things.
Cycles can become the brosiff King of Realism. Eevee can become the Queen of Fantasy.
27 Comments
I think Eevee and Cycles both have their use cases, but unfortunately for your request, I think Eevee is mainly used for non-raytracing rendering (e.g. for game development) and not as a magic paintbox.
Having said that, I suspect that some of what you are asking for (filters, etc) can actually be achieved using the compositor or by additional/novel material nodes (or by being able to use modifiers/filters on the camera, which in some respects is what the compositor is doing, except in post-processing). That way, you could apply crazy effects no matter which renderer you were using.
Maybe in the future the "everything nodes" initiative will allow for more effects and cross-connections between materials, particles, compositor, modifier, and animation nodes?
For other things, they sound like things that are more "they could put this feature in the renderer" but in actual fact are so specific that they would only ever be used in very specific circumstances (so basically just a novelty). In many of the examples you gave, this effect can already be done (though perhaps complicated to achieve) and if it were implemented as you describe as a feature it would not not so much be dependent on the renderer, as it would be on other parts of Blender.
For example: "Motion blur trail showing someone's path through a scene but in a static render" - I'm fairly certain that this is already possible. You don't need to render out a whole animation in order to get the motion blur effect, you just need to keyframe the movement in two frames, put in the motion blur settings, and then render a single frame. Same with motion blur along a curve. Takes seconds.
Another example: "Customisable shadows" - which direction is the shadow casting? which light source or all of them? is it blurred according to the size of the light source or crisp? Anyway, that's something which can already be achieved (or simulated) using modelling and materials and the compositor. If customisable shadows were a feature that people were calling for, it's more appropriate as an add-on which automates or otherwise make it easier to apply the effect. And add-on's are something which can already be done...
I like your enthusiasm and I don't want to crap on your idea - some of the effects are interesting and would be nice to achieve without having to jump through hoops - but to come back to my original point, they're mostly not really the domain of the renderer and little/nothing to do with the differences or similarities between Eevee and Cycles.
* @kidtempo * Worth a shot to add more to the field and make it easier to use. Have you seen the flash running before and how long his trail is? Imagine being able to not have one that long but you can make a path around a rock or something. I know my idea is lofty and impossible but it would add a lot to it. Less of a headache.
You keep saying compositor but that is the issue you have to do a lot of basically rigging and snaking around things to get to a certain point of acceptable when if they were built in you could just use the preview port, adjust them til you like it and then render it out.
Also with the trail idea, you could do it per material as well.
Meh. I still think it is a good idea to dabble in that area. People have imagination, but sometimes they may not be able to learn compositor or it is very complex to achieve something in it that a node or two could make happen.
* @crop.circles.studio * I dunno. It sounds a lot like taking an incredibly powerful tool and dumbing it down so people can just play with it, rather than having to learn how to use the tool.
I haven't watched The Flash since the first couple of seasons, but I think I know the effect you're talking about. I was almost certainly done using some sort of 3D or compositing software. I don't know which, or what technique was used, but it's unlikely that it had a "make speed lines" button (unless they paid or developed an add-in).
If you're assuming you need to go through the whole rigging process to get the effect you're describing, you don't. You literally only have to key a start position for an object at from A and then an end position at frame B, then pick a frame somewhere in between and hit render. The degree of motion blur is then adjusted in the motion blur settings. It's not the level of control you're looking for, but no rigging or (real) animation required.
As for snaking in between and around things - you draw a curve marking the path you wish your object to follow, and constrain the object to the curve. Key the start and the end of the curve - and the motion blur will follow that path. Again, pretty simple, and again, no rigging or animation.
(While it would be nice to be able to see this in the viewport, something like motion blur is actually slow to calculate - though apparently this is something that will eventually be coming)
Alternatively, extrude the curve so that there is a plane the height of the object snaking along your chosen path, then smear an image of the object along the length of the path. Or glowy speed force or whatever. There are literally many ways to do this, each with its pros and cons. The trick is learning them and how they can be used, rather than expecting a tool ready to do this.
When I was going on about the compositor, it's because it's actually a powerful tool which is actually the secret weapon of VFX - arguably more so than the renderer and not too difficult to use. The trick is understanding what you can do with it, and how it can be used as a short-cut to get some of the effects you were talking about.
For example, motion blur (or any other effect) applied to just a single object or material. You can make a render with that just that object/material (with the effect turned on), and a second render with everything else (and no motion blur) - but that material/object cut out. The compositor can then combine the two renders into your final image - but it doesn't just overlay the two images. When rendering, the compositor can use the calculated depth so that the "special" object/material appears in the correct place (i.e. behind things in the foreground and in front of things in the background).
Yeah, it sounds complicated, but it's how it's done in the industry. Even with today's hardware it's not always feasible to pack all of the detail and complexity into a single render - stuff is done in layers and combined in the compositor. It also allows minor changes to be made to a single layer without re-rendering the whole scene. Not bothering to learn the compositor is like not bothering to learn how to use layers in Photoshop - you can get by without it, but it'll make your life harder.
In addition to tricks like this, the compositor can apply filters, lens effects, lighting adjustments, and a bunch more stuff - and it's not dependent on the renderer (actually, this isn't quite true - there are more and better options if you are using Cycles because, unlike Eevee, it is using "real" environments and ray tracing, rather than faking it with rasterisation). What the compositor needs is more nodes to be able to apply more powerful (and novel) effects - if it gets more love then more users may take notice of its capabilities.
Anyway, I've meandered on long enough. The real point is that asking to turn Eevee into a magic paintbox is wrong. Eevee simply isn't part of Blender which will give you the effects you are looking for (in fact, because it uses rasterisation, Eevee is actually a worse renderer than Cycles any many effects are either poor approximations or just missing). The things that are going to give you your crazy tools are going to be more modifiers, more material nodes, more compositor nodes, more interactivity between the tools, and learning how to use them.
* @kidtempo * So basically you saying learn compositor and screw off. To a degree. If I wanted what I want a new render engine would have to be made. What you are saying about dumbing it down is wrong. I am saying add more features. Yes making some things simpler. As in just using a node instead of going through compositor a good example is with photoshop you have filters, you have layer styles etc. You can just do it with a click or two. Your method that you keep saying is the grandest would require a lot of masking, layers, and so on.
I dunno why likes were turned off but it would have been fun to see. I already know that this was denied as soon as that happened.
I get it change is not a fun thing to think about. My way of doing it could be considered insulting. Hell, we could have what can be considered a subset of some sort like grease pencil is not quite anything to do with eevee or cycles it is its own thing. This could be as well.
I am too tired to make sense currently. Still could have been interesting to at least flesh out ideas. You keep going on about compositing and I am trying to simplify it maybe the compositor can do more but my method can give you a quick result if that is all you seek. I dunno still bizarre to see likes turned off or the icon not showing.
This place only allows you to slam ideas down instead of fleshing them out to a degree at least when you are shut down like that with the likes then again it could be a glitch on my end dunno. Yes, it bugs me because if that is how it is chosen to be dealt with then creativity is not wanted.
I get it I overstepped the invisible boundaries here, it is what it is.
* @Craig Jones * It is back but if I could show you a picture you would see what I saw all day yesterday. The heart icon thing was just gone. I thought it was odd so I screen capped it but then realized I had no way of showing you guys. I was like damn just shut down any option of having an idea fest. Honestly used to it to a degree but still.
* @crop.circles.studio * I've used photoshop since before layer styles. Almost all features of the layer styles system could be done manually. Someone turned all those manual steps into Macros/Actions and later Adobe made them layer styles that could be adjusted on the fly. Photoshop FILTERS on the other hand are almost all impossible to be done manually. It's a completely different approach to data manipulation. There is nothing easy about it.
For some of your requests the solution exists out there somewhere as a node group for either the compositor or materials that you can find and reuse. And there are other programs much better than Blender for some specific tasks.
For some of your other requests, even if everyone agreed with you, you'll be waiting 4 or 5 years before work starts on those features because they are like Photoshop Filters. They are much harder to make than just taking something that can be done manually and turning it into a single button.
* @crop.circles.studio * "I screen capped it but then realized I had no way of showing you guys" ... wtf? just post the screenshot.
* @thinsoldier * I can't while commenting as far as I can tell. Do you mean in the main post? If so then it makes no sense in context.
* @thinsoldier * Even if it took that long it would still be nice for the others who come in as newbs. We are not the only ones who use it, younger ones will come in and have no clue as well. Even if I have to do something complex does not mean they should. I waited 4 or 5 years for Blender to fix its bloody GUI waiting 4 or 5 years is not that bad for me even in my older age.
* @crop.circles.studio *
! [ ] ( h t t p s : / / i . i m g u r . c o m / p 9 R Q B u t . p n g ) but without all the spaces.
Take a screenshot (can be either saved as file or copied pixels to OS clipboard) then go to imgur.com and upload file or paste from clipboard.
Copy image url and type it into the comment using the format shown above.
* @thinsoldier * I can't join I haven't got a phone number.
* @crop.circles.studio * I think you are overreacting to my reply. I was not being critical of your ideas for filters and effects - only that Eevee isn't the mechanism to do that with. It's like insisting that "as the industry is transitioning to electric motors in cars, this would be a great opportunity to make the engine play your favourite tunes depending on your mood". "Not the radio?"... "No! The engine!".
You keep referring to the renderer having nodes. It doesn't. Not really. All the settings for the renderer are in the tabs: "Render properties", "Output properties", and "View Layer properties". While, yeah, you can turn on/off Bloom and Freestyle in these settings, you're not really controlling them much to any degree - and it is everything-or-nothing so they affect the whole scene and not individual objects.
Eventually all this may be editable using nodes once Blender enters its "Everything Nodes" development phase, but right now, these settings are what you have, and they're not really suitable for the effects you describe.
The Materials Node Editor allows you use nodes to set the material properties of the objects. The renderer then uses the material's shader when working out how to render the scene. You could argue for the addition of a fantasy effects shader - in theory that would be closer to what you describe, and allow for nodes which wouldn't otherwise make sense on realistic shaders like Princlipled BSDF etc.
Could the Materials Node Editor use new nodes to allow all sorts of filters? Yes. I'm personally surprised that it's not possible to do even basic pre-processing of incoming textures (whether they are procedurally generated, or image files). Just a basic gaussian blur would be helpful, but that could also open up the field to all sorts of interesting filters. I think filter nodes for image file textures might be easily implemented, though I suspect it could be considerably more difficult for procedurally generate textures - and it probably wouldn't make a difference if Eevee or Cycles were being used, as it's basically just pre-processing.
You're very hostile to the Compositor. Have you used it? as you don't seem to be aware that the Compositor has a Node Editor just like Materials do... While the selection of nodes available is rather limited, in theory the compositor could also apply the filters you suggested like oil painting and lens effects etc. as easily as adding a node. It's literally as you described you wanted (though the nodes themselves are rather basic and lack any novelty)
When rendering, it's possible to also generate "Z" value data (it's just a checkbox) - this is basically a depth map. It allows the Compositor to know the position of all the objects in the rendered scene (relative to the camera). Using this, it means you don't need to mess around with masking layers or anything messy like that. If, for example, you created an apple that cast an unnaturally blue shadow then the Compositor knows that the special shadow layer with the blue filter node should apply in front of the banana but behind the bunch of grapes - not based on the order of layers, but based on the position of the objects (or in this case, shadow) in the scene. No mask required.
On the subject of likes, I believe that the original post can only receive upvotes and downvotes (it's the buttons to the left of the post title), while the comments get likes/hearts. And you cannot "heart" your own comment.
* @thinsoldier * It's worth noting that Photoshop's filter gallery has dozens of novelty filters, 95% of which are never used in the wild because they are either too niche, or offer too little control. They get played with when a user first gets Photoshop because they are a fun distraction, and then never again.
I think in Blender there is a much higher barrier to monkeying around with novelty as it requires at least basic understanding of modelling and materials and lighting - far more difficult than scribbling on a page and then playing with filters. Once a user has at least some proficiency with the relevant tool they start to see that the opportunities available to them with a bit of tinkering are greater than any one-click filter.
* @crop.circles.studio * "join" ... "phone number" ... I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you trying to create an account on imgur? You don't need to have an account to post images on imgur.com
* @thinsoldier * Thought you did. I will check back.
* @kidtempo * One click filter with a lot of adjustments. Such as the glow filter and how it works in C4D for instance. It has quite a few sliders. I just think it is asinine to have to learn something entirely different to use with 50 nodes to make one simple thing happen. Glow may be a novelty to some but that is if you are seeking realism. I do not like being limited. Being told take 50 percent of your work and toss it on the compositor. I have never composited a day in my life beyond photoshop and masks to put together a huge render I normally could not do otherwise on lesser software. A lot of things that would be judged as a novelty for those like you could be a gateway filter to something grander if someone fiddles with it. You ever grab a node that you were like hey what does this do. You used it, and it was boring at first, but then something clicks, and you combine it with another useless node, then combined it with a few others and then bam you have something amazing that. One component alone does not make art, but a few dozen can make something grand. One novelty filter alone does not make something grand but many can.
Take noise, or fiber in photoshop what will you ever do with that. Eyes are one example. Mix it with zoom blur and there you go. I use a few novel filters with some everyone uses to make somewhat toonish shaders from time to time or to see what I can come up with. To have someone be the arbiter of truth is just asinine. Yes, what I asked for did not get much in the way of likes but I would say never toss out every idea. It could spark something in your brain to come up with something better.
A sign of an intelligent person is the ability to entertain an idea he finds foolish.
Many times myself I have found myself scoffing at stupid crap especially eons back and now I use a lot of those ideas. I had an idea for terrain being made using the cloth simulator terrain artist scoffed at me. I shared a tutorial on it recently and quite a few people liked it.
Just because you scoff at the notions does not make it trash.
(Never be afraid to share your idea even in the face of hatred, booing and hissing. Even if your idea is novel it may spark someone else to complement or surpass your idea.)
* @kidtempo * before you think well I must be shit at what I do if all I do is rely on building, lighting and rendering I say my results speak for themselves. I have been in this game for a while now.
mundi_umdali.artstation.com/projects/ELYxEK
* @kidtempo * The issue I have towards the compositor is that from my dealings with people and it. It seems to be a lazy way of saying we do not feel like making it, besides if you do all of this you can sorta get what you want. It is lazy that is the first thing. The next is I have to learn something entirely new again. I have to spend time in a node graph again for hours if not days trying to get something exactly right. When I want to be in 3D space getting stuff right. It should not have to be a must do. You should not have to offload 50 percent of your work on it. Some people love it good, good for you. Me I do not wish to spend weeks learning the whole damn thing to try and get something to maybe work how I want it to. I have never used any type of compositing before and I do not wish to be forced to. You can praise it as the 2nd coming of crhist for all I care. It just seems to be Blenders version of UE4s google it. It is all I hear, and it is annoynig to constantly hear it. It is a miracle cure well sorta kinda you not going to get the results you want entirely but who cares.
(Do you know how much crap I have up here memorized. How many softwares. It is a lot. I am running out of room. It should not be this complex for something that chills me out.)
* @crop.circles.studio * I personally have never used Blender's compositor. Lots of people have not. As a compositor it's infinitely slower and generally less capable than other compositors. If these things are so important to you that you write several essays in the comments trying to convince people, you should scrape some money together and hire a developer to give you one of your features. The greatest thing about Blender is that this is actually possible.
I actually wish for some of your requests as well, but I'm familiar with the current size and budget of the Blender dev team and there are many far more important and universally used features that Blender lacks which makes it woefully inferior to its main competitors. 99.9% of the community wants those missing baseline features before anything else.
Often when you see a new feature in Blender outside of this category it is because an outside developer started doing it because they felt like working on their own feature that they needed or thought would be fun to make. Eevee, Grease Pencil improvements, Sculpting Improvements, Animation Nodes, SV Nodes, Box Cutter, Decal Machine, etc. etc. etc. Nobody asked the main Blender dev team for these.
For Eevee and Cycles to "have their own separate path" they would need their own separate teams of developers. At the moment the very very few main developers behind Eevee and Cycles are busy doing dozens of other things to dozens of other areas of Blender.
* @thinsoldier * If I could code I would help without hesitation. Considering things I would think they would do at least some Linux things. Have people at least contribute code wise. Yes we definitely need some things that are by default in a lot of places like saving custom bevel profiles. Because well it turns out that is not a thing. Also the ability to lock these panels so clicking off them by accident does not apply them. I hate the latter so much. Now starting to hate custom bevels a lot.
* @crop.circles.studio * I looked into the C4D glow effect - and difference between it and Blender's Bloom is that in C4D the glow can be applied to a single material - it's otherwise the same effect. The way it actually works is that even though it's a checkbox and a slider in the materials panel, it's a bloom effect applied in post-processing - it's actually just sending information to compositor, which then does all the steps I described: it does a layer pass for the objects with the glow/bloom, calculates the effect, then composites it into the final image at the correct depth. While C4D doesn't make it obvious that you are using the compositor - you are.
Is the C4D solution (for glow/bloom) more elegant? On a casual level, yes, it's considerably easier and more intuitive to use. Are there drawbacks? Also yes , there are problems with the implementation (based on how rasterisation engines work) that require workarounds, and they're just not something you can do if all you have to work with is a few sliders in a material - they require going directly to the compositor...
Could something like a material-glow be implemented in Blender? Yes. But the way it would work under the hood has little to do with Eevee, and everything to do with creating a shader* which a) tells Eevee to render layer passes and depth maps for objects with that material, and then b) tell the compositor to composite the rendered layers together into the final image. It's abstracting something that is already possible to do manually, into something more simple and intuitive to use - and while that's probably a good thing, it has nothing to do with repurposing Eevee as a non-realism-based magic paintbox, which was the main point of your post .
(*For clarity, a "shader" in this context is the component which describes the material to the render engine. Most commonly used is "Principled BSDF" which represents a material realistically. An example of a non-realistic shader is the Toon shader)
I've tried to explain several time now that your idea that "Eevee should stop pursuing realism and turn to fantasy" is wrong, not because I think there shouldn't be a gallery of fantasy effects in Blender, it's because Eevee is not the part of Blender which (in most cases) is or would be responsible for delivering those effects because that's just not how Blender works . That's simply the engineering of Blender and Eevee. The actual parts of Blender - the objects, the materials, the shaders, and the compositor - are where that magic filter development has to happen, and the render engine only needs to be tweaked to support them. Then if people want to use the filters or not - good for them.
If you could get past playing the victim of a vicious attack on your creativity, you may have cottoned onto the fact that I have been overall supportive of the addition of many of the filters you described. Yes, I have at least tried to explain how something like that may already exist (though requiring some extra steps), or, if it were implemented as a single, easy-to-use node, where in Blender it would make sense that node to be available. That in itself is non-trivial.
I take offense that you imply I'm gatekeeping against the development of filters and other effects when I have literally given examples of how several could/should be implemented. I will have to put it down to the fact that you are too wrapped up in being defensive to have acknowledged that.
* @crop.circles.studio * I have made no comment on your creativity.
When I talk about there being a higher barrier in Blender to applying effects, it's because you need a scene, you need lighting, you need objects, those objects need materials, and only then can you start throwing in filters that will give you effects; Whereas in Photoshop, you can just scribble on a blank page and then click a filter to see its effects.
To someone picking up Blender for the first time (not you), the presence of effects are basically beyond their reach - not because of gatekeeping, but because without the fundamentals there is nothing to be rendered. And like in Photoshop, there's already a ton of features in Blender which are rarely used - not because they lack creative potential, but because users haven't tried to use them, or they for a specific purpose which means they might try it once and then never again.
Regardless of your experience in parts of Blender, it seems clear you don't understand how its components work under the hood or how software development works. It's somewhat exceptionalist to be demanding that developers need to make change a component to work the way you want it to work when it's quite apparent that you don't know what that component actually does.
* @crop.circles.studio * O-kaaaaaay. That's kind of strange and also highly ironic... You can't be bothered to even try - let alone learn - to use the compositor, but it's the developers who are lazy for not implementing something in the way you think it should be implemented? I mean, that's kind of selfish and entitled, don't you think?
* @kidtempo * I bothered I find it asinine and I still am trying to learn it. I just never have used one before and I see it as lazy to have that as the oh you want this then learn this thing, and connect nodes for hours on end, and hope for a good result.
* @kidtempo * Software developement you start with a chart, you code some stuff, find bugs, fix bugs, make more bugs fixing bugs, pull your hair out, cry in a corner for a bit, then get back to work. While drinking liters of coffee, hoping one day you will leave the office and see your kids before you have grandchildren. I somewhat know how it works.
* @kidtempo * o have two renderers chase the same goal is very asinine. Eevee can receive realism as it goes as is but why not give it more. Not chop its head off as stated. Just give it more fantasy allowable elements.
* @crop.circles.studio * Uh... no. That's not why there are two renderers - Eevee just renders information using rasterisation rather than ray tracing (which is what Cycles does). It's still at its core an unbiased renderer (as is Cycles), meaning it renders the scene as it is presented to it - except it calculates radiance by taking a path from camera/pixel-to-object-to-light source (rather than Cycles which goes light source-to-object-to-camera). To change and make it work the way you want it to wouldn't just be taking Eevee in a different direction, it would require throwing it away and redesigning it from the ground up (and along with it, many other parts of Blender).
Eevee exists because most game engines are also rasterisation-based (and game development represents a significant chunk of the user base), and, coincidentally, for many people speed-of-use versus precision is an acceptable trade-off. But while rastering is faster, it has greater technical limitations (which is why currently some features can be rendered with Cycles, but cannot in Eevee) - it has nothing to do with having greater opportunity to implement fantasy effect.
You're still not understanding that it's not the rendering engine which will give you the fantasy features that you want. The features have to exist (i.e. be developed) elsewhere in Blender, and then (if necessary) the renderer tweaked to support them. When updates announce that Eevee now supports motion blur, or AO, or GI, or any other effect, it's because they have hacked Eevee to support a feature which already exists. No amount of changes to the renderer itself will give you any of the features you want - the features simply have to be developed in their relative places first (and when they do, they'll probably appear in Cycles first - not because of a realism-bias, but because Cycles just renders something as it is, while Eevee often has to use hacks to simulate the same effect).
Having already explained this to you multiple times, I don't know if at this point it's trolling or simple, willful ignorance which is stopping you from understanding. If you won't accept that it's not "pursuing a realistic Eevee" which is preventing your fantasy features, then don't be surprised at being treated like a crazy person standing outside and shouting at clouds.
Also, pro tip: you keep using the word Asenine . I don't think you know what it means. It means something which is ridiculous because it is unrealistic and/or impossible.
Awkward...