I join the hordes of those who are super eager to test EEVEE Next but can’t even start without the Shader To RGB node.
I would like to stress that for many of us the Shader To RGB isn’t a minor curiosity but a huge part of our Blender workflow - and one of the major selling points that make EEVEE so unique (and so envied) in the 3D world:
“I think the great advantage of blender for npr is the “shader to RGB” node cuz you can use the way an object reacts to light as a color pass for masks, textures and other effects”
“BRO YES i love the shader to rgb node! dont get me wrong, i would love it if it were in cycles, but eevee is already lightyears ahead of c4d.”
“Im just toying with c4d and redshift’s terrible support for non realistic shit and blender keeps pumping out bangers”
“So good. Reckon you’ll start moving to blender at some point ? Surely its gonna become industry standard within the next few years…”
Cant find the thread now… and i have not checked the code but shader to rgb is quite a hack to get it to work and can break with complex setups… There is probably a proper way to implement it but would need more work to do so…
In many different (and sometimes unpredictable) ways, the Shader to RGB node is part of the workflow of thousands and thousands of NPR artists around the globe. It would be a shame not not to prioritize this aspect of what makes EEVEE so unique and so far ahead of the competition.
It doesn’t matter if it can break- for Eevee Next to have feature parity with Eevee (the stated goal), it must have Shader to RGB. As it stands, Eevee Next cannot replace Eevee
For me, Shader to RGB is not an optional… It is as integral to my work, as noise samples are for a Cycles user.
I’m not saying that I can’t conceive of embracing a new solution, that would involve a new shader that accomplish even greater things. But for NPR artists, that shader node is not just a convenient “hack” for us. Without the ability to achieve that shading result, most of us would probably not use Eevee Next… Which, I don’t imagine is the goal for us to be abandoned.
Given that multiple sessions at bcon 2023 literally involved npr, I hope we will see Eevee Next re-add these features soon.
I’ll take a look in the 4.1 version just released, maybe it’s been addressed? If so, awesome…
ok, just checked in 4.1, comparing Legacy to Next.
Shader to RGB in Next improved, in that it no longer makes everything Black. But, it’s not behaving as in Legacy; it seems to not evaluate correctly if a color ramp is next in the chain. Or something.
Sorry, it’s hard to troubleshoot and eval a material/feature when you don’t know what is expected to work, and what isn’t done yet.
So it looks like it’s still perhaps in coding/updating mode.
And please, definitely never take my thoughts on the state of alpha stuff as always accurate without any doubt… I know everything is in a state of flux, so I would hate to say something that mislead someone else, due to either me phrasing it poorly, getting it wrong, or just making a weird typo.
Here we go. Shaders are assigned the same in both scenes; i just changed the active object in each image, so both materials trees could be seen. No changes made in the scene itself, except switching from Legacy to Next.
The ground image is easier to see sort of what’s happening. It doesn’t go full black, but it only does eval on the initial ramp stop. It’s sort of like overall it’s only generating a single shader value - like, only diffuse or only diffuse falloff (not sure which would be the correct description.) Obviously not interpolating between the two, though.
Please keep on topic. We are daily reading the feedback and change our priorities accordingly. We are on track to ensure that most important feedback will be addressed as described in the original post.
Due to dependencies both technical and planning wise the order we fix issues might not be what you expect. This is because development time is scarce. We optimize developer time to ensure that Blender 4.1 would get most fixes in and then some.
Hi, this one I didn’t find in known issues, although it’s quite obvious, please correct me if I’m doing something wrong.
Metallic reflections with roughness look dull and “washed-out” and reflections look quite different compared to legacy Eevee (these are printscreens of viewport, renders had noise issue).
Done with 4.1 alpha from today.
Is this something being worked on, is it Shader or new Eevee issue? Or known/accepted behaviour?
Especially car paints suffer greatly from this.
Thank you for your work.
…
Edit: Forgot to mention Cycles is very close to legacy, which I consider “ground thruth”. also non-metallic rough reflections suffer from this.
The hair shader in your screenshot includes a node group. Without being able to see all the nodes used by the material, there is no way to determine what the problem might be… so, try to expand all the groups, then remove as many nodes as possible to the point that the problem can be illustrated, and the cause targeted to a specific node or combination.
