LogInCorey Corza offered a look at Blender's upgraded renderer, set to launch in July 2024.
Without a doubt, one of Blender's most anticipated features is EEVEE-Next, a new and improved version of the software's OpenGL-powered real-time render engine, EEVEE. In development since 2022, EEVEE-Next promises to overhaul nearly every aspect of the engine, improving shadow resolutions and shaders, revamping the baking workflow, and greatly increasing the maximum number of lights you can place in a scene.
While many expected EEVEE-Next to debut alongside the 4.1 update, set to be released later this week, its launch was postponed by the Blender Foundation and pushed back to Blender 4.2 LTS, which recently entered Alpha. According to Jeroen Bakker, EEVEE-Next had some performance issues in the new setup of how shadows and horizon scans are evaluated, so instead of shipping it half-baked, the studio decided to postpone the release and continue the development until July 2024.
A few days ago, Digital Artist and Programmer Corey Corza, known to many for his incredible add-ons for Blender, offered a look at version 4.2's EEVEE-Next, comparing its lighting capabilities to the regular EEVEE and showing that the upgraded renderer allows for more realistic and lifelike lighting.
The environment itself, Corza commented, was set up using the botaniq asset pack, Megascans, Geometry Nodes, and SpeedTree. You can check out the full demo attached above or by visiting the author's Instagram page.
Earlier, Corza also shared a collection of smooth mechanical contraption animations and showed how these gadgets were modeled, demonstrated how to fake a waterfall in 3D without the need for resource-taxing simulations by leveraging Bezier Curves and Volumetrics, and showcased an awesome procedural rock made in Blender.
If you would like to learn more about EEVEE-Next ahead of its release, here are some great guides to get you started:
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