Realistic ArchViz from Cycles to Eevee (with tips)

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

joaulo,

It looks like some of your Eevee settings are wrong. Possible issues could be:

1. IOR settings in the glass shader are wrong.
2. Not enabling the “Refraction” setting in SSR settings.
3. Incorrect setup for the “Cubemap Reflection” light probe.

Without checking the scene is hard to tell completed. Maybe you can make a simplified scene with a couple of glass that have the reflection problem for me to take a look at.

[joaulo]

Hi Eric and thank you for your time, I’ve checked IOR but it seems good for me. Refraction is on.
Incorrect setup for the cubemap reflection is probably the cause. I suppose I have to test several different solutions to find out what works best for my scene.
I managed to get a very simplified version of the scene with the same behavior:
test_scene3.blend (725.9 KB)
(you have to bake lights)

[imQS (QAISER SHEHZAD)]

Hi
Very Important Information that i required. Well done. Can you share this file plz . . …

[philipphilipphilip]

Is there any way to get access to these Eevee modified scenes? I wrote an email to Chocofur but didn’t get any reply! Would appreciate it a lot, could pay both of you a fee.

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

Joaulo,

Some how I missed your reply to this thread. I might be to late for you, but it is a good problem scene for Eevee that others followers of this thread might benefit.

The main difficulty is that this section of the kitchen recedes inward making difficult for both reflection cube and irradiance volume room size probes to worked correctly.

Best solution is to add nested or multiple probes to the existent room probes for the receded section of the kitchen.

Changes:

1. Added small size reflection probe just around the receded section of the kitchen.
2. Added small size irradiance volume probe just around the receded section of the kitchen.
3. Adjusted values the glass shader.
4. Adjusted Eevee settings for the wine glass shader.
5. Adjusted Eevee quality settings.

joaulo test scene: Notice the unrealistic high intensity reflection for both the glass and wine bottles. In this receded section of the kitchen reflected light should not be coming from the left and right.

Fix test scene: Notice that the reflection coming from the front and lower intensity, since the receded section of the kitchen receives less light.

See attach the test fix scene. It needs to be baked first .test_scene3_Fix.blend (857.1 KB)

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

imQS,

I don’t own the original cycles Evermotion or Chocofur scenes. The Evermotion set of scenes I purchase last year at half price for $50. The Chocufur scenes I receive when a purchase the full course in Interior Visualization 2.80. My early bird price was only E40 it has gone up a lot now it is E239. Scenes can be purchase individually if desired.

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

philipphilipphilip,

If you do have the scenes, maybe I can help you. Send a private message.

[joaulo]

Thank you for the reply Eric, I see that you have achieved a great improvement compared to the original file!
I also managed to get it work after several attempts and this is the final result:

Pasta Stories setting

Here are some images from the animation project I’m working on: [Cam_Teaser.000240x135] [Cam_Teaser.001240x135] [Cam_Teaser.002240x135] [Cam_Teaser.005240x135] [Cam_Teaser.009f240x135] [Camera.001240x135] [Camera.002240x135] [Camera.003b240x135] [Camera.005240x135] [Camera.007240x135] [Camera.008240x135] [Camera.009240x135] [Camera.010240x135] [Camera.011240x135] We have just completed the scene and made a small teaser to show the setting, I posted the final result in the animations section. …

It can certainly be improved, but for the moment I am very satisfied. I also took a short animation from it:

Short teaser about our first animation project in Eevee

[Pasta Stories - Teaser - a first look at the setting] Hello! I want to share an important milestone in our project, we’ve finally completed the scene and all necessary assets before going through characters animation. The setting is ready and we have decided to close “PHASE 1” with a teaser to show what we’ve done so far. We started working on this more than a year ago with Blender 2.8x + Eevee. You can find more information about our the project here, while you can find more det…

Thanks again for the support

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

Good job in the texturing and modeling. Done with CCO even better. The animation looks sharp and without flickering. My only suggestion would be in having a bit more dynamics in the lighting and shadows, see some of my kitchen close up’s from this thread. Overall well done.

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

It’s being a while since I have done an Eevee scene. Here is Chocofur interior scene 6.

This is a one of the nicer Chocofur interior scenes with multiple rooms, plants, carpets and interesting mirror at the entrance.

Workflow:

1. Adjusted power for area lights.
2. Disable the HDR world background node.
3. IRV for the living room 5x3x4.
4. IRV for the kitchen room 2x2x3.
5. IRV for the side room 2x2x3.
6. Reflection plane for the entrance mirror.
7. Rectangular reflection cube map.
8. Most of the materials were update to use the principal shader replacing Chocofur custom glossy and metal shaders. This shaders cause Eevee artifacts.
9. Use my realistic shader for glass items.
10. Reduce the size of the contact shadows on the area light to closely match the cycles render.
11. Sampling rate of sampling at 256 to smooth the shadows on the floor.

This is the Cycles raw render:

The Eevee scenes adjusted to match closer to the composite version of Chocofur.

The Eevee raw render took 33 seconds:

Multi-Room camera view render took 38 seconds:

Living and kitchen camera view took 36 seconds:

Edit 5/31/2020: Reworked the main IRV probe to avoid darker corners and increase the accuracy of GI. Update all scene renders with this change.

[cdog]

Do you use IRV with furniture turned on or off? I always struggle to position it so that some of the probes don’t end up inside furniture which causes errors in GI. And how do you overlap several IRVs (like how much should they intersect if at all)?

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

cdog,

IRV probe setup can be difficult to avoid intersecting with scene objects. In all the scenes from this thread I have not turned off furniture or scene objects to properly setup the IRV probes.

Tips for easier setting up the IRV probe samples:

1. Less is better. Use the least amount of IRV samples to get a good GI. I usually start with 3x3x3 and only increase if is really needed. Less IRV samples the easier is to avoid scene objects.
2. Stretch IRV samples as much as possible from the floor to ceiling(vertical) and to the walls (horizontal). This will give more accurate GI. Also avoids intersecting scenes objects because the IRV samples would be close to the floor or ceiling and the middle samples would typically be above the furniture or other scene objects.
3. Do minor shifting of the IRV probe if needed to avoid intersecting.
4. If still their are issue with intersecting object. Create a collection for objects to hide from the baking of indirect lights. Then add this collection to the IRV probe property “Visibility Collection”. Make sure to invert the visibility collection by clicking on the double arrow button.

In multiple rooms where I use one IRV probe per room. Here are some tips:

1. Between two IRV probes only intersect between the falloff sections of the IRV probes.
2. Adjust the falloff size for better GI accuracy. The default of 1 is usually too high, I typically use less than 0.5.
3. Next step is adjusting the IRV probe “Intensity” property. So the light intensity between the probes are smooth and natural.
4. Their some additional tips in my link on nested IRV probes at the top of this thread.

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

In the next two scenes will be from Entity Designer. He has done some high quality Cycles ArchViz available from BlenderMarket at https://blendermarket.com/creators/entitydesigner.

First I will be doing “Warm Bathroom”. I have not done this type of small room lighting and it is not to very complex. I did not add the lens flared post processing effect, since the Eevee lighting does not work well with the glare compositor node. A much better options would be to added using a Blender addon like “Flared”.

Main issues that are different from Cycles are the IES lighting not available for Eevee, mirror reflections, and light emissions reflections behind objects not visible to the camera.

Workflow:

1. Disable the HDR world background node.
2. Added emission material to the bathroom small windows to simulate visible light coming from the outside.
3. IRV for the bathroom of 4x4x4.
4. The IES ceiling lights were converted to spot light by adjusting the angle to match the IES in Cycles
5. The lighting coming from around the mirror in the WC did not reflect because is was not visible (SSR). I added a circle area light to the area around the mirror to match Cycles.
6. Reflection plane for all the bathroom mirrors.
7. Rectangular reflection cube map.
8. Adjusted materials as needed to closely match the Cycles scene.
9. Use my realistic shader for the glass cup.
10. Sampling rate of sampling at 64.

This is the Cycles raw render without the lens flare:

The Eevee raw render took 15 seconds at 1900x2100:

![Warm

WC camera view render took 10 seconds at 1900x2100:

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

This probably one of the best ArchViz in the BlenderMarket it is the “Dark Interior Living Room” a top row BlenderArtist image recently. Made by Entity Designer available from BlenderMarket at https://blendermarket.com/creators/entitydesigner. It features a classical interior with dramatic lighting from light to dark transitions. The average scene shot Cycles rendering time was 30 minutes as mention by Entity Designer at 3.5k resolution. For my Eevee converted scenes the average rendering time was about 30 seconds.

Main issues that are different from Cycles are having only an HDRI image as the main source of lighting. As discuss before HDRI’s in Eevee don’t generate shadows, so standard lights need to be used for lighting to simulate an HDRI. Thick shag rug and, Whiskey decanter bottle, and glass with liquids and ice materials required changes compare to Cycles.

Workflow:

1. Disable the HDR world background node.
2. Added a large window area light as fill light, one main spot light at the center, a secondary spot light to light the right side of the room.
3. IRV for the bathroom of 4x4x4.
4. Adjusted all the small side lights to match Cycles.
5. Tweak the shag carpet particles, material and effector settings.
6. Modified the glass, liquid and ice materials for the Whisky bottle and glasses. In glass material had to change the glass shader node to use a transparency shader node to properly show the liquid and ice inside the glass.
7. Reflection plane for the mirror.
8. Rectangular reflection cube map.
9. Adjusted materials as needed to closely match the Cycles scene.
10. Sampling rate of sampling at 64.

This is the Cycles raw render:

This Eevee render facing the window took took 33 seconds at 2880x2160:

This Eevee render facing the window took took 29 seconds at 2880x2160:

This Eevee render facing the side took took 24 seconds at 2880x2160:

This Eevee render facing the other side took 25 seconds at 2880x2160:

This Eevee render close up of the Whiskey bottle and glasses 29 seconds at 2880x2160:

This Eevee render facing the coffee table and window took took 28 seconds at 2880x2160:

[2MJ (Attahiru Jibril)]

Nice. Do u have any lessons on eevee realistic exterior rendering?

Also do you have video tutorials on your workflow setting up eevee?
Thanks in advance.

[Thesonofhendrix]

Personally i don’t like the concept of downgrading renders to a less accurate representation/fidelity, merely to boast very low render times… Now i know it takes you a lot of work to setup your renders and get the highest quality out of EEVEE, and sure its good if time is money and the lower quality renders are acceptable for the client. But thats the only benefit i see. Time will march on processing power will increase and physically accurate ray-tracing and light transport methods will always be superior.

[skuax]

Try to make movies. You il see clearly the benefice.

[Thesonofhendrix]

Theres always render farms.

[lacilaci86]

Without raytracing and proper GI solution this will never be good enough. Blender devs could take a look at Unreal engine cause that one is a real offline renderer killer.

[lacilaci86]

here:

UE4.26 | DXR GPULightmass with denoiser | devrendering

now imagine cycles doing this type of realtime lightmap baking for eevee, then add rtx reflections and refractions and goodbye cycles for archviz (or most of it).

Sadly it seems the only ones to be able to compete with this is again epic with their upcoming UE5 realtime gi(assuming it can handle man made objects well)