2023-10-23 EEVEE/Viewport Module Meeting

[Jeroen-Bakker]

Practical Info

This is a weekly video chat meeting for planning and discussion of Blender EEVEE/viewport module development. Any contributor (developer, UI/UX designer, writer, …) working on EEVEE/viewport in Blender is welcome to join.

For users and other interested parties, we ask to read the meeting notes instead so that the meeting can remain focused.

• Google Meet
• Next Meeting: November 6, 2023, 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM Amsterdam Time (Your local time: 2023-11-06T10:30:00Z → 2023-11-06T11:00:00Z)

Attendees:

• Clement
• Jeroen
• Michael
• Miguel

Due to the Blender Conference the next meeting will be skipped.

EEVEE

• Added mesh volume bounds estimation (https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/commit/f79b86553a4).

• Material Pipeline Refactor (EEVEE-Next: Material Pipeline Refactor · 2a725001d1 - blender - Blender Projects). Remove options for translarent objects. They should now be detected automatically

• EEVEE-Next: Rework the material panel (EEVEE-Next: Rework the material panel · 7b97bc48d8 - blender - Blender Projects).

• Bug fixes

  • NaN artifacts caused by raytracing denoising (https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/commit/69e85382cdb).
  • Low resolution on local lights shadows (https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/commit/439d3ae945f).
  • Broken volume shadowing from sun lights (Fix EEVEE-Next: Broken volume shadowing from sun lights · 454c8fd866 - blender - Blender Projects).
  • Missing light specular contribution (Fix EEVEE-Next: Missing light specular contribution · 920005ddc0 - blender - Blender Projects).
  • SubSurfaceScattering: Invalid buffer format (Fix EEVEE-Next: SubSurfaceScattering: Invalid buffer format · 5831913204 - blender - Blender Projects).
  • Allow clearing of 3D texture using the framebuffer workaround (GL: Allow clearing of 3D texture using the framebuffer workaround · 5d1489c61d - blender - Blender Projects).

• Looking into regressions where dependacny update graphs aren’t performed for materials

• Checking how we can convert settings from EEVEE-Legacy to EEVEE-Next automatically.

• When debugging GPU, not set variables will be set to NaN, making it easier to detect issues during development.

Metal backend

• Adding support for existing tests cases.

Performance

• Research has been conducted to implrove the drawing performance of many objects within the current architecture. This lead to a proposal which is currently being discussed. (#113771 - Improve per-object overhead in the Draw module - blender - Blender Projects)

[josephhansen]

There’s a massive regression that’s not on the list:

EEVEE Next: Shader to RGB doesn't work

[Jeroen-Bakker]

Thanks for mentioning. Note that the list mentioned in the post are the things that we worked on last week. It is not a complete list of all the issues. That is something that projects.blender.org provides already.

[sunkper]

Hi, will there be some kind of a write-up on the current status (features, limitations, what’s not implemented but planned for 4.1, what is the “Thickness” in the Material Output is about?, …) of EEVEE Next? I know there are tasks on the project site but I think they don’t provide a lot from the user perspective.

Maybe something for Blender Conference?

I already reported several issues on the project site but I didn’t report some because I wasn’t sure if they’re incomplete or not implemented (bleeding artifact with SSGI when denoising used, denoising make SSGI look darker, refraction shader glitch, sunlight shadow glitch, specular arfifacts, …).

That said, I really like playing with EEVEE Next! Here some pictures from the classroom and attic scenes I “tweaked” for EEVEE Next playground.

[Jeroen-Bakker]

The manual, limitations and release notes still needs to be written. We will do that after stabilizing the essential parts. Yes even as a developer it is nice to play around with this awesome render engine. Clement, Miguel and Michael did an amazing job and I was glad to be part of it as well!

If you’re at the conference come by and say hello!

[kurk]

I really hope this will be resolved for the release. This node is responsible probably half of the use cases in EEVEE. For me, that is the only reason I use EEVEE. It would be hard to do stylistic work without it.

[thorn-neverwake]

@kurk @josephhansen

Appears to be fixed in this build:

• October 26, 02:02:05 | 247491ef0f42

[ThinkingPolygons]

What made you think it’s fixed?

[thorn-neverwake]

Ok, idiot alert.

I thought 4.1 was set on Eevee Next, not Eevee. It’s not corrected; sorry for that, I truly feel stupid for the bad intel.

[josephhansen]

That is extremely unfortunate; that means 4.0 is going to be released with Eevee Next being the default, but a massive part of Eevee Next being non-functional. That seems ill-advised for a major numbered release.

[pragma37]

@josephhansen

that means 4.0 is going to be released with Eevee Next being the default

EEVEE Next is coming in 4.1, not 4.0.

[2905710881]

ssrt is the future, this needs vulkan to support, ssgi is based on the screen space of the global lighting, not suitable for ssgi to complete all the animation production, different viewpoints of the light intensity will change significantly.
ssgi is better for these shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGrPj0CIlA