Blender 4.2 migration guide

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Revision as of 09:26, 9 July 2024 by Alexander (talk | contribs)
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Blender 4.2 is a kinda significant update as it includes the new version of the Eevee render (called Eevee-Next internally).

This new version relies heavily on modern GPUs and raytracing algorithms for viewport rendering, hence it's not quite compatible with Verge3D. To overcome this, we implemented several changes which you should be aware of.

Transparency

Transparency settings from the older Blenders looked like these:

Transparency old.png

Most of them removed in Blender 4.2, some that remained are mostly useless now. To fix this, we've implemented several custom settings for transparency (on the material panel):

Transparency new.png

The new setting "Transparency Hacks" might be really useful to combat various transparency artifacts.

Shadows

There is no way to configure size of shadow cascades in Blender 4.2, but we've added these settings back:

Shadow settings new.webp

Same story is with "Clip Start" and "Bias" settings (assigned for light sources):

Shadow settings lights new.webp

As well as for cascaded shadows:

Shadow settings cascades new.webp

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion settings have been removed in Blender 4.2, we've recreated them as custom Verge3D settings:

Ambient occlusion new.png

Light Probes

Some settings for spherical and planar light probes have been removed in Blender 4.2, but you can find the missing ones below, on the Verge3D panel:

Light probes new.webp

WTF, you must support Eevee-Next in Verge3D properly!

Unfortunately this is not quite possible due to the following reasons:

  • There is no hardware-accelerated raytracing APIs available in the browsers (at least at the moment)
  • Raytracing is really slow and won't be practical for web-based interactives (possibly for decades).

In general, the only things we can do now, is to approximate Verge3D rendering so that it is more or less consistent with the Blender viewport.