Render Pipeline Poll
Hey, folks!
We've now finished a few updates working almost exclusively in the new pipeline - Blender with Eevee renderer.
There's still plenty of tweaking and improving to do. The character models are only half-remastered, the hair shaders need work, and the lighting is not nearly as good as it can be.
So now I want to hear from you. We need to know if we're moving in the right direction at all, and I'd like you to have a look at one additional possible change.
New Look in General
First, please tell me if you like the new look at all. Or if you even noticed it. Here are a few frames from the scenes made in Blender. I'm not putting the older scenes side by side, I just want you to go with your gut.
Do they look better than what you remember from before? Worse? Or maybe you can't tell the difference?
The animations are definitely better in Blender, so please only consider the general look of the scene for this part.
So please mark the appropriate "General Look" options in the poll below.
Eevee vs Cycles
Second, please take a look at the two possible render paths. These are the exact same frames, with only slight tweaks to the lights to make them look more similar.
The Cycles version can be a bit buggy since all the shaders and post-processing setups were tuned for Eevee. We made the bare minimum adjustments to render it.
What do you think? Does the Cycles version look better? Worse? Different, but not strictly better or worse? Or maybe it basically looks the same to you?
Please mark the options in the "Render Path" segment of the poll.
There are pros and cons for both Eevee and Cycles, but we are leaning towards switching to Cycles if you folks don't hate it.
As always, thank you for your support, and if you have any additional thoughts - please don't hesitate to leave a comment!
See you soon!
Comments (26)
the color and shadows shading of cycles is leagues better. Just the background forest photo show significant improvements
Please tell me that blair bath tub scene is coming to the game. I need that.
It is! To the next Alpha!
I must say the cycles looks more dark with more shadows but overall i would say better looking for a more real looking stile but the other version has its place i think too
Cycles looks better in general, but is too heavy on the mascara/eyelashes, particularly noticeable on the Lyriel render. Oh, and it also hides her teeth there, too. I think it's better overall, but you will probably need to do more precision fine tuning with it, so IDK if it's worth the tradeoff? You folks would know better.
Yeah, the eye shader just doesn't work like it should in Cycles. We'll definitely fix it if we go with Cycles.
The Evee pics look way better. The shadowing on thier hair looks stupid with Cycles
Lyriels face looks a lot better in Eevee though imo. The eyes and mouth have a really dark shading and the face generally looks like "poppy" like in eevee. (just noticed, because i was looking at other parts of the images first haha) but maybe thats just tweaks like you mentioned in other comments.
Just noticed after looking at it again: in the lyriel shot the OC hands look so much better in cycles. gives me photoreal vibes with the lighting/shading
To be honest they both look really good but i would pick eevee just because of the lighting difference but yeah thats just me but as always good freaking job👍🏽
I was leaving to eevee but seeing your replies about being able to fairly tweak the lighting/shiny aspects and hair sells me on Cycles also being great
Some of the scenes like blairs bathing scene seems a bit off composition wise in cycles, but i would argue that is because the scene got created with Eevee as the "glasses" the designer looked through when designing the scene. What is very noticable for me is the shine on her chests and the vagina lips in the second last image have a much more realistic definition for free (whereas in eevee they blend much more into the rest of the body and arent as noticeable) And thank you for doing this! Love the transparency and the explanations. Upgraded just to vote and contribute! :) Keep it up!
One of the things that's standing out to me is the lighting on the eyes. In most of the comparison shots, the Cycles renders are significantly darker, and it's to the detriment of the image, in my opinion. It's like they slathered eyeliner on and it makes them look unpleasant. Maybe that's something that can be tweaked, I dunno, I'm not a 3DCG artist. I'll support y'all no matter what, but if pressed, I prefer the Eevee renders overall. Edit: .... and evidently I'm hilariously in the minority on that opinion. Fuck.
Long time lurker, I have to say cycles looks better with the way it interacts with hair and the shadows on bodys. Specifically Lyriels, either way it looks great and I like the new direction
I prefer the Eevee cause it feels like it maintains more of the uniqueness of the art style where cycles is pushing it more towards a realistic look
Yeah, Cycles is always going to look more realistic due to its handling of light. Still, we can tweak it a little bit.
Overall I think Cycles looks way better, for one minor "gripe". Eevee hair lighting looks better imo, especially indoors as seen in the Lyriel kitchen screenshot. For my personal taste cycles renders the hair a bit too dark, but thats really the only thing
Yeah, hair shaders need much more work in general.
I think the Eevee looks better overall.
I don't really like the extreme contrast of the cycles render path, and the extra "shininess" it leads to in bright area.
As I said in the post, we only barely tweaked the shaders. That shininess is extra specular highlights, we can definitely tone them down. Contrast can also be tweaked in the postprocessing.
the overall look is much better in some shots but only somewhat better in others and same could be said with cycles which feels like its just an issue of practice with a new system and or settings.
well cycles looks far better is all i can say
I know the materials are different but I don't like the cycles ones as much. Some of them looks better like cait and Blair outside. But the others looks like they have a plastic reflection shine to it and they feel darker
Extra reflection shine is because we haven't tweaked the shaders enough, we can fix that. And they are slightly darker because of the different light handling, but this can be fixed by, like, adding more light sources.
At the Cycles renders, the wet surfaces, like Blair's breasts, the water itself and Lyriel's ears looks a bit more realistic, that is for sure. Or at least they got more shine