BlueLightSFM
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Morrigan Model Update + Cycles
🕑 Added 2021-11-16 02:32:42 +0000 UTCHey! I've done my typical be quiet as I try to finish a project rather than provide an update, and I figure I really should give an update.
I've spent most of my time finishing out the Morrigan model as I'm aiming for her public release. I've been setting up some posters to test her out, and make any needed fixes.
I've also sort of combined this with the personal project of wanting to test out cycles. This is especially important with Blender 3.0 coming out soon.
The results are quite promising. The first image is in Cycles, the second is in Eevee. The lighting is not the same for bother posters. Rather, I tried to edit the lights so the results in Eevee were as similar as possible to Cycles.
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Now for more specifics. All Renders were done at 4k. Cycles at 1024 samples. Blender 3.0 is currently in beta.
Blender 2.9 - 15m28s
Blender 2.9 - 15m57s (Denoised)
Blender 3.0 - 5m26s
Blender 3.0 - 5m42s (Denoised)
As you can see, the results are quite substantial. The default denoising for Blender cleans up the the images quite reasonably while not adding much to render time. Blender 3.0 cuts render time down to almost a third of the original time. At 1080p, it might almost be plausible to use Cycles for short loop animations.
For comparison's sake though, here's Eevee.
Blender 2.9 - 25s
In a vacuum, Eevee looks quite good. Cycles manages to beat it out quite subtly with lighting and shadows. Most notably cycles has much better color to the warmer shadows. Also, the depth of field works much better with the fire effect. The is an entirely procedural material shader. I actually made the shader, based off a tutorial, with Eevee in mind, but it looks much better in Cycles. The depth of field further does not interact very well with it in Eevee.
You can still see how valuable that render time is though. Eevee is likely still a must for any decent length animation, but Cycles is really making ground.
I initially started the Cycles shaders for Morrigan just to make sure they were compatible for anyone who wanted to use it. Based on Rigid3D's suggestion, the shaders themselves are basically the same as for Eevee. In the end, I actually found I liked the results for Cycles enough that I think they'll be the main renders to preview the model.
I have 4 posters planned for her launch, but only one is NSFW. I think she should be ready by the end of the week.
Comments
BlueLight
Hey, so I originally created it using this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orNRbPw-KZ0&ab_channel=CGPatrick I played around with the shape and values, so it's not exactly the same, but the shader setup itself is more or less the same.
Bianca Anderson
How did you do the effect in her hand? I tried a blue one for a project I was working on but couldn't make it work as was forced to scrap the project.
BlueLight
I would tend to agree. There are aspects that just feel different but not necessarily better. As a whole though, I think the lighting and shadows do just look a little better. Hair looks better in cycles. Depth of field as I mentioned before. While it's not a huge sample size, I have more posters in progress, and the results are pretty consistent with them. That is, although subtle, I've preferred cycles for them all.
UnprocessedCoalLump
Eevee looks more washed out, I think. It's not bad, but the clolor grading in Cycles is just better, imho. And while I guess you could tweak Eevee for that result, it would probably end up taking as much time as Cycles to render. Even so, a 1080p render should be enough, as most people that game, don't even game at 1080p. So I wouldn't worry about resolution that much. A lot of interesting things, I am excited for what the future will bring. That Blender 3.0 update seems to be wild, for render times. Though there are some noticeable differences in the renders, I can't tell if they are better or worse. Not from these renders, at least. So it is entirely possible that they are negligible.
