Eevee Vs Eevee NEXT Vs Cycles: An In-Depth Comparison

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Eevee Next will be out in Blender 4.2, but will it change your career? Let's find out...
This video will dive deep into the differences between eevee and eevee next. We'll also compare Eevee Next to cycles.
There are a lot of improvements.
As you can see in the final list of the video. Almost everything in Eevee Next is better than in Eevee. Sure it is a bit slower, but it's barely noticible.
Cycles is still the better render engine. However, it comes at a cost... TIME!
With the improvements in Eevee Next I'm sure a lot of people will give it a try once more and it's especially useful for our Hamster-PC-Bros. They will be able to make better looking renders on worse machines now. Which is great!

[@theblenderender]

Are you going to use Eevee Next? Let us know😎 There will be some awesome uploads this month and its going to be wild. But, there is a problem... I'm not at 10k subscribers? What the heck. Subscribe broski!

[@Andredy89]

i can't f... wait for it! Raytracing makes it looks way better! In 4.2 alpha E-Next works rly bad on my machine....

[@ivomirrikerpro3805]

I was hoping Eevee Next become interchangeable with Cycles to the point that an Eevee the viewpoint would give a color/lighting accurate representation of Cycles.

[@theblenderender]

Unfortunately that's not the case. I was hoping for some lumen and nanlite stuff as well. It's a big improvement compared to the previous eevee though

[@ivomirrikerpro3805]

@@theblenderenderYeah. I hope they scrap whatever GI they got going and implement AMD GI-1.0 which is open sauce and said to be as good if not better than Lumen. Although the displacement is good, I was also hoping for native Parallax Occlusion Mapping support. I do not expect anything close to Nanite until at least Blender 5.

[@NicCrimson]

@@ivomirrikerpro3805 Do they really need to implement something like nanite though?

[@ivomirrikerpro3805]

@@NicCrimson Well no Blender does not need to render billions of polygons real-time. In the same way they didn't need to re-invent the Grease Pencil three times in a row, or add Geometry Nodes. But if they want to continue to optimize, innovate and grow as a formidable platform in a highly competitive arena; then maybe yes they do

[@NicCrimson]

@@ivomirrikerpro3805 OK, what I meant is. Can't you essentially create what Nanite does with geo nodes? or am I misunderstanding how Nanite works?

[@M1ndblast]

No glass in Eevee? That feels so strange. Pretty sure I've played around with glass in Eevee in the past. I guess that was more of a trick then, instead of actual glass behavior. Weird that Eevee Next doesn't get this though. It feels like a natural use case of raytracing. I'm still very happy though. Performance, HDRI and emission are the main things I'm looking forward to. We're getting close to being able to render in frames per second rather than seconds per frame. I'm willing to trade some fidelity for that. Sure, the fact that with pure raytracing everything "just works" is nice, but Unreal is demonstrating that we're getting close to the end of an era where it made perfect sense to set up an overnight render just so you could have a few minutes(if even that) of animation in the morning. The only hurdle was converting your Blender project into an Unreal one, as the extra time required to convert(and also having to learn how to convert in the first) only made sense for projects past a certain size. Eevee Next might make that redundant.

[@maksym4]

Just tested the alpha myself. To make the glass work you need to turn on the "Raytrace Refraction" option in the material when you use the normal EEVEE, and then it will work in EEVEE-Next.

[@Pulse2AM]

I do Archviz I would use Eevee over Cycles because it's faster if it had usable glass. You can do glass in EEvee, it's just not good enough for my work.

[@Miatpi]

Clear, informative and cut to the point. I like!

[@theblenderender]

Thanks mate!🙌🏻

[@diarya5066]

Cycles gone fry my computer

[@VisualistAyush07]

Eevee next is really a big deal thank you for awesome comparison

[@theblenderender]

Yeah man no problem my friend!💪🏻

[@thomaspachura4056]

Nice video. Is Evee next coming out on the 13th? Or is it post-poned to a later date? I'll probably swap over to evee next when it releases, since my potato struggles on cycles.

[@theblenderender]

Actually it would've released at 4.1 but due to shading issues it has been postponed to 4.2 and will probably be in its mature state when 4.2 is officially released. Which is in july...☠️

[@thomaspachura4056]

@@theblenderender thank you

[@gameplayontamil2879]

@@theblenderender thanks for the info.

[@FunTheMental-Studios]

10k? Wait 1..2..3.. Boom 💥 Something Went Wrong :/ Your're Going To Get 1M :)

[@FunTheMental-Studios]

Nice Video Btw Keep Going And Throwing 😁

[@theblenderender]

Hahah nice accident ;p Look mom I'm famous now🙌🏻

[@theblenderender]

Thanks bro! I'll keep going no matter what

[@chasingdaydreams2788]

Hdri's working with eevee next is huge but Ill be honest, compared to other real time solutions in other softwares like lumen, eevee next does seem underwhelming and it isnt even out yet

[@gc_pascua2771]

Home we could bake textures in eevee next

[@ABE2000]

Eevee Next is a good render engine from what I see. I approve it.

[@theblenderender]

Seems better than the previous eevee, I'll take it

[@naoton201]

Is eevee next available on 4.1 normal version if so how do i turn on Ray tracing

[@theblenderender]

It's only in 4.2

[@sebbosebbo9794]

yeah glas f.e. is a missing part that shows, Evee is missing a lot specially fast path tr. features or simplified emulations... hope the realtime render mission that starts this year include that topic and will be an option in the future specially in comparison to Unreal E. . 4.2.LTS will be a Mega boost for Blender and 2d 3d heads no doubt and the devs. and community will nail it.. Love the amazing feature updates ... Better or fixed, rewrited, updated improved : - Speed , lights , colorspace , Evee & 3d view in general, - compositors, G.-Nodes & Modifiers + tools, - anmation tools+GUI, UI in general, Brush system, VSE features, etc.🥵 etc.🥵..e ...t..🤯💥 p.s. keep going...great channel...

[@theblenderender]

Thank you😎 true Eevee next definitely is not up to par with cycles and still far removed from the quality of real time rendering as in UE. I hope big improvements will be made in the coming year so Blender can compete in this area as well.

[@atdynax]

What are you talking about? Eevee can do glass. 100%. You gut need to turn screenspace reflections and refraction on. I use glass all the time for my characters eyes. it wouldn't work if glass wasn't possible.

[@marcfuchs6938]

No, Eevee can't do glass. But I totally get you, because I also work all the time in Eevee. What we are using is an approximation, of how glass would look like. With IOR. The area behind that shader gets distorted in a way, that resembles glass. But there are harsh limitations, like this can only be done in one visual layer. What I mean by that: For example, put several glass bottles behind each other, that break the light. You'll see, that the rear bottles basically disappear when looking through the first bottle, because this refraction can only be calculated on one layer. When other elements behind the first layer are also supposed to refract light, they simply disappear behind the first layer, that already does that. The effect is convincing enough for my projects, but when you compare this effect with real glass with raytracing and stuff, you'll see a lot of a difference.

[@edenem]

@@marcfuchs6938Eevee can do glass, but Eevee cannot do glass as well as cycles.

[@marcfuchs6938]

@@edenem No, Eevee can't do glass. It can fake glass somewhat cinvincingly, but it can't do actual glass. If you remain with the argument that it can, tell me how the glass in your shot is created.

[@edenem]

@@marcfuchs6938 With that logic, cycles glass isn't real glass either, since cycles is similar to "biased" render engines (though cycles technically isn't one) and prioritizes some rays over others, cycles does NOT have perfectly photorealistic light simulation for glass and other refraction, so by your standards, cycles can't do glass either. Why does there even have to be a line drawn with "it can't do glass but can fake it" ?????

[@marcfuchs6938]

@@edenem You are right in one thing, if an engine can do glass or not is basically a definition thing. My opinion is neither right or wrong, I just connect it to solid arguments. And these are: Eevee is simply warping the screen space image to make it roughly look like glass. Though it also depends on you adding reflective shaders too. Eevee can do this process only on one layer, so if a glass object is behind another glass object, it will disappear, as well as any additional glass object. Eevee is faking by approximating. Cycles is using actual raytracing, not faking the refraction by bending screen space, but by sending the light rays on a realistic path through all those glass objects, one after the other. Nothing disappears, it is a proper calculation, compared to Eevee's approximations. But don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean, that I dislike Eevee. So far I am an Eevee-only user and I don't mind those approximations. I am good with it. But in my book, Eevee can't do proper glass. It can offer an appealing representation of glass, that is good enough for me. Eevee next is said to be able to do the same raytracing refraction as Cycles at some point. I would consider this proper glass then as well. But being a person, that is totally into NPR rendering and doesn't care much for photorealism, I totally don't care. So far, I stick to Blender 3.5, because I don't wanna deal with various changes yet and stick to my guns. I don't need the latest and best, perfectionism is not the target for me.

[@barretxiii27]

A note on EEVEE motion blur: While there seems to be no visible difference between the renderers, the way EEVEE handles motion blur right now is one of the reasons to look forward to NEXT. Current EEVEE renders "sub frames" in between frames for every quality step, then blends them together for the blur effect. It's pretty much an official version of the True Motion Blur add-on from a few years ago back when EEVEE could only blur camera movements. The NEXT blur is supposed to be capable of operating in real time in the viewer, and seems to behave more like a realistic post process motion blur like you'd find in a game engine (at least from my experience with the 4.2 test builds from a few months ago). The reason this is significant is that the sub frame method of EEVEE means scenes that take a lot of time to build (such as those with dense modifier stacks, particularly anything with subdivision) would have to rebuild for each sub frame, drastically increasing the total render time per frame. So not only will NEXT deliver a massive improvement in general rendering overall, you can add motion blur without potentially taking longer than a cycles render!

[@theblenderender]

Awesome information mate! Thanks for sharing♥️

[@Atsolok]

Goeie video!!

[@theblenderender]

Dankjewel!💪🏻

[@phreshalias]

I imagine Eevee Next will require more computing power than regular eevee right?

[@theblenderender]

Yeah but it's barely noticable, nothing to worry about

[@goldenmikytlgp3484]

Eevee next has A LOT of issues First of all, the new shadow method is glitchy, not that accurate, and glitches out when a model is directly in front of a light source. And lets not talk about the bounce lighting, which is ALSO inaccurate many times and it only works IN CAMERA. Meaning that its very limited and nowhere near cycles. I HOPE that eevee next gets the LUMEN treatment, because gesus christ is it atrocious right now.

[@MorenoG2]

Eevee next did recieve some shadow updates in latest branches of 4.2 and is theoretically better, but still they are developing things left in order for shadows to behave normally, since vsm is complex for small group of people. They are currently aiming for feature pararity with old eevee, while "real" gi instead of standard screen space ray-tracing is planned, but judging from their thin resources, they will probably not deliver it for this year.

[@Waffle4569]

Be very careful with Eevee Next's screenspace raytracing. Screenspace effects can be great for stills, but in motion they rear their ugly head with occlusion artifacts.

[@elpathdigital4391]

I tried eevee next with ray tracing on some detailed mechanical models. I have to say it doesn’t work very well, as it makes them look like clay or something rubbery (probably my bad configuration). Aside with the slower render time, I think it probably won’t be useful for me.

[@theblenderender]

Interesting, personally I'm using cycles as well

[@theburlapchap3644]

Eeveee Supports the Glass shader though.

[@conorrennard8628]

You didn't use light probes or irradiance volumes so it doesn't look as good

[@theblenderender]

True, but I didn't use them for eevee as well so the comparison holds

[@LORDSofCHAOS333]

cant wait when fix eevee next with ray trashing it will render so fast

[@zergidrom4572]

ppl can throw slippers at me, but i think overall lighting in eevee was looks like more game stylish and better than eevee next.

[@theblenderender]

I get that, now it's more in betweenish. Luckily you can turn off raytracing and it will pretty much look like old eevee

[@Dehancer]

Such an informative video! What do you think of collaborating with us? If you are interested, how could we get in touch?

[@theblenderender]

Thanks! Yes I'll have a look. You can reach me on [e-mail]

[@neorientalist]

EEVEE NEXT can do glass

[@theblenderender]

True, you need to enable some extra settings

[@andreykhazhevskiy3230]

Eve has glass.

[@theblenderender]

Yea, enable some extra buttons in the render properties

[@MrlegendOr]

Eevee SSGI is better than Eevee next🙃

[@sudd3660]

Eevee Next has to run in realtime in viewport, as a material preview does now. right now eevee is to bad for most things and requires setup and baking to work. hope Eevee Next work without setup, and get a release this year. probably still need top gpu to get good fps.

[@theblenderender]

True, it will be nearing real time, but what I would like to see is some sort of realtime cycles🤌🏻

[@乂Hi乂]

Evee is faster and lighter

[@taherlashine9998]

After reading your comment I thought well yeah you deserve that 10K Subs ur asking for, so I headed to the subscribe button to hit it just to find out that I'm already subscribed ! Wish I could "Double" subscribe broski to get you any closer to that 10K subs mark your aiming at ! Great stuff bro ur posting / sharing, many thanks man. Keep 'em coming pls 🙏 👌👍

[@theblenderender]

Hahaha this made me chuckle.😂 Thanks for the support broski.🙌🏻 I'll keep uploading either way. 3k, 10k, 100k. More is coming...🔥

[@taherlashine9998]

@theblenderender That's why you're awesome man 👌👍 I'm glad it made you chuckle, and seriously broski great stuff you deserve all the best and I have no doubt that you're gonna hit that 10K Subs sooner than you know 👍