4 ms·

Oh man, I am pumped about the viewport improvements. Whenever I'm working on a scene, tweaking lighting or shaders is really arduous because after every tiny ad

Oh man, I am pumped about the viewport improvements. Whenever I'm working on a scene, tweaking lighting or shaders is really arduous because after every tiny adjustment I have to sit and wait at least a few seconds to really see what effect it had. These previews look amazing.

valine 6y ago
Have you tried using Eevee for shader adjustments? A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working with Eevee and then switch to Cycles for the final render.
- brundolf 6y ago
  Certain shader nodes only work in Cycles. In particular I use the Bevel node a lot for an "edges" effect: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/input/bevel.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_node... You can get the difference between the surface normal and the bevel normal and use that as a "sharpness" value to mask things like wear on the corners of objects
  - knolan 6y ago
    One other suggestion is to use a render border. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/editors/3dview/navigate/clip.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/editors/3dview/navig...
- capableweb 6y ago
  > A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working Don't think that's common at all because that won't always work well. The difference between Cycles and Eevee is the lightning, materials, rasterization (compared to raytracing that Cycles does) and such.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    The GP is correct in many cases. Part of the reason Eevee was created was for this exact purpose. You can't preview certain shader nodes (though you can preview most of them), and you can't preview raycast-only effects like indirect lighting (unless you bake it) and certain volumetric effects. But you can preview your geometry and direct lighting and physically-based materials well enough to get an idea of how things will look, and then you can make a final pass where you preview the actual Cycles output. If you're fixing your UVs, or adjusting the depth of a bump effect, or arranging a scene to see how objects' colors balance with each other, or tweaking the metal-ness of a material, Eevee works great as a preview even if your final render will be in Cycles. Eevee is particularly useful when working on an isolated object (minimal indirect lighting), vs seeing how an entire scene gets lit.
brundolf 6y ago
Edit: I should clarify this only applies when 1) I'm using a Cycles-only shader node (which unfortunately I do a lot; see the thread below), or 2) I'm focused on lighting the full scene with all the indirection, or 3) I'm adjusting volumetric effects Otherwise Eevee is a great stand-in
zlsa 6y ago
I've found that with complex shaders, it can be more performant to use CPU Cycles rendering because GPU rendering can have a substantial delay after changing parameters. In the same vein, Cycles is sometimes faster than Eevee, because the latter needs to recompile the shader after every change.

valine 6y ago

Have you tried using Eevee for shader adjustments? A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working with Eevee and then switch to Cycles for the final render.

brundolf 6y ago
Certain shader nodes only work in Cycles. In particular I use the Bevel node a lot for an "edges" effect: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/input/bevel.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_node... You can get the difference between the surface normal and the bevel normal and use that as a "sharpness" value to mask things like wear on the corners of objects
- knolan 6y ago
  One other suggestion is to use a render border. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/editors/3dview/navigate/clip.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/editors/3dview/navig...
capableweb 6y ago
> A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working Don't think that's common at all because that won't always work well. The difference between Cycles and Eevee is the lightning, materials, rasterization (compared to raytracing that Cycles does) and such.
- brundolf 6y ago
  The GP is correct in many cases. Part of the reason Eevee was created was for this exact purpose. You can't preview certain shader nodes (though you can preview most of them), and you can't preview raycast-only effects like indirect lighting (unless you bake it) and certain volumetric effects. But you can preview your geometry and direct lighting and physically-based materials well enough to get an idea of how things will look, and then you can make a final pass where you preview the actual Cycles output. If you're fixing your UVs, or adjusting the depth of a bump effect, or arranging a scene to see how objects' colors balance with each other, or tweaking the metal-ness of a material, Eevee works great as a preview even if your final render will be in Cycles. Eevee is particularly useful when working on an isolated object (minimal indirect lighting), vs seeing how an entire scene gets lit.

brundolf 6y ago

Edit: I should clarify this only applies when 1) I'm using a Cycles-only shader node (which unfortunately I do a lot; see the thread below), or 2) I'm focused on lighting the full scene with all the indirection, or 3) I'm adjusting volumetric effects Otherwise Eevee is a great stand-in

zlsa 6y ago

I've found that with complex shaders, it can be more performant to use CPU Cycles rendering because GPU rendering can have a substantial delay after changing parameters. In the same vein, Cycles is sometimes faster than Eevee, because the latter needs to recompile the shader after every change.