Blender 4.1 – EEVEE Next

EEVEE Next is the next big update to the EEVEE render engine in Blender. One of the big updates is the inclusion of Screen Space Ray-tracing.

To surmise:

• Eevee can use Raytracing
• It is still screen-space

My thoughts on this update are mixed. While it is definitely a step in the right direction. The quality and the fact that it is still screen space is a disappointment.

The biggest pro to the update is that you no longer have to jump through many menus to get bounce lighting or screen space refractions. Instead, it is now a single button click.

While I am excited for where these developments may take us into the future - Eevee still has a way to go before it can reach that potential.

It is still one of the better real-time render systems out there, but pales in some regards to the likes of Lumen. And with Redshift RT and Octane Brigade (Allegedly) releasing to full versions in the coming years, Eevee may be relegated to hobbyists only or people working with Cycles previews.

I do hope that the Blender Foundation invests more into the Realtime approach.

If you are still learning blender - you can read my article on getting started here

or

Thank you for reading.