Hello, does anyone know what happened between Blender 3.5.1 and Blender 4.0.2?
My project looks a lot better in Blender 3.5.1 with some things completely missing on Blender 4.0.2 such as the darkening at the bottom of the bottles.
My scene has only one light source on both versions; turning it off makes the render completely black. Both are on Filmic color management profile.
Both versions are using the same area lamp settings. Everything is the same, yet Blender 3.5.1 renders a better result. I have tried changing the exposure, gamma, contrast; nothing brings back the ‘lost’ details.
The newer version has a more realistic principled shader. The newer version is likely more accurate to how this exact bottle setup would look in real life.
Your scene looks better in the old version because you planned the materials and lighting for the old look. I would suggest finishing old projects in the old version of Blender and doing any newer project in the new version, as it would be difficult to readjust a look you worked hard to get.
However, the new rendering tends to work better in most scenes and for most users. Cycles always had a problem where it looked less realistic than other renderers and the materials were a part of that problem. In the old version, the reflection on the side of the bottles is really bright, maybe even brighter than the ground it’s reflecting. This is inaccurate to the laws of physics, the shader is reflecting too much light at glancing angles.
Here, it happens to add a pleasing rim light effect, but if you are trying to make a whole room with polished floors and furniture, this same effect ruins the realism in a subtle way by giving everything a slight cartoonish glow.
Thank you for your input! I have done more testing side by side, and I was able to achieve the rim light effect once more in Blender 4.0 by decreasing the ray depth from 2 to 1.9 in the glass shader. I am still missing the darkness around the bottom of the bottle. I’ll see if I can bring that back, too. This project was completed in Blender 3.5.1, but I couldn’t stop obsessing over the lost details, so I set on finding out how to bring them back.
have you tried lowering the number of glossy bounces in the render settings? This setting allows light rays to bounce multiple times inside a transparent surface, which makes it look brighter.
Unfortunately, that didn’t make a difference. There is one thing I tested however; I switched Principled BSDF in Blender 3.5.1 from GGX to Multiscatter GGX, and it looked as barebone as it does in Blender 4.0. Maybe I can figure out how to use Glossy BSDF instead because that one has GGX.
