Blender Eevee vs Marmoset Toolbag

Artwork Blender Tests
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#1

This is comparison of two render engines. I rendered my game ready character with 10k tris and one 4k texture set.
Animation 640 frames
Blender Eevee Rendering Time: 1hour 15min
Marmoset Toolbag Rendering Time: 20min
The same scene setting as much as possible

Eevee
pros:

  • easy lights and shadows setup
  • physically correct lights setup
  • easy setup lights in volumetric environment

cons:

  • slow rendering and postprocessing
  • blurred render output
  • not usable sharpen filter
  • simple and incorrect SS shader
  • needed build own parallax shader
  • difficult tweaking of fresnel
  • no contact shadows or occlusion for environment lighting

Toolbag
pros:

  • fast rendering and postprocessing
  • high quality render output
  • better setup and result of SS shader
  • parallax shader

cons:

  • difficult setup right lights and shadows
  • no physically correct lights setup
  • difficult to setup and incorrect result of lights in volumetric environment
  • deal with lights leaking

Animation link:
https://youtu.be/7bHwhpG5q84

EeveeVsToolbagPreview
EeveeVsToolbagPreview1920×1080 242 KB

Eevee
Eevee1920×1080 429 KB

Toolbag
Toolbag1920×1080 427 KB

7 Likes
#2

if i am not wrong,Eeevee has contact shadow control

1 Like
#3

not for environnement ( hdri )

2 Likes
#4

Marmo looks so much better. I wonder how cycles and few major game engines would compare.

#5

Contact shadows/shadow size control is what Eevee does better than Marmoset IMO. Toolbag has that box yes but gives zero control over what it does.
Overall Marmoset looks noticeably ‘sharper’. Also some shader features like parallax and displacement shader features are very welcome. And I think in comparison Eevee can’t currently do anisotropic highlights, nor does the skin shader look as nice.

Workflow wise Blender wins by a landmile: No node-based materials in Marmoset, whole interface slows down when the scene gets complex so even selection or rearrangement of the UI becomes tricky, no ‘Merge’ feature for scenes (I lost count of how often I requested that), thus combining already set up scenes is cumbersome. There are also some hard to reach important checkmarks (like for mip map control or backface culling). You end up wasting a lot of time having to recheck those if you keep importing assets into the scene.
Beyond that it simply lacks the versatility of a full blown 3D package but that goes without saying.

@pachupp Unreal can look better than both in some cases but the import workflow is painfully slow and there are instances where you have to fight the game engine optimizations. Like texture compression and geometry getting culled very aggressively depending on camera distance.
You can also get lost in the interface very quickly (e.g. for setting texture parameters).

#6

Comparing game engines requires advance skill set. In this test I focused mainly on artists who need easy make Artwork visualization. I plan to make comparison with the UE with another project. :wink:

#7

You are right, workflow in Marmoset isn’t ideal. However final output and speed are important. In this case Marmoset wins. Eevee needs to be better.

#8

Wire
Wire1920×1080 256 KB

#9

Parallax shader is not a problem for me, just download one and you’re set.

Biggest eevee cons for me are render time, contact shadows and SSS, in that order.
I wonder what would the render time be doing a viewport render (view > viewport render animation), sadly color management was broken there depending on the output format since 2.82 I believe.

#11

I wonder how the new Toolbag version compares in terms of render quality/speed vs Eevee?

Also with V4 has that price skyrocketed beyond belief or what? I have been using Toolbag since the inital free build they distributed all those years back on Polycount - I think that didn’t even have a version number - and been using every commercial release since and literally spilled my tea when I saw the quote for what a license upgrade would cost me.

Yes, it comes with a 3D painter now. But why? :slight_smile: