manual/render/eevee/index.rst

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
    scene_settings.rst
    world_settings.rst
    object_settings.rst
-   materials_settings.rst
+   material_settings.rst
    light_settings.rst
    light_probes/index.rst
    limitations/index.rst

manual/render/eevee/limitations/general_limitations.rst

@@ -112,6 +112,7 @@ Shader Nodes
 - Some utility nodes are not yet compatible with EEVEE.
 - Certain combinations of BSDF's will result in more noise than others.
   This is the case when mixing Diffuse BSDF and Refraction BSDF.
+- Displacement of flat shaded surfaces will split the mesh. See :ref:`eevee-workaround-displacement` for workaround.
 
 .. seealso::
 

manual/render/eevee/material_settings.rst

@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
-
 *****************
 Material Settings
 *****************
@@ -7,6 +6,11 @@ Material Settings
 
    :Panel:     :menuselection:`Properties --> Material --> Settings`
 
+.. seealso::
+
+   While EEVEE shares the same material node system as Cycles, not all features are supported.
+   See :ref:`Material limitations <eevee-limitations-materials>``.
+
 Pass Index
 ==========
 
@@ -16,7 +20,7 @@ the :doc:`ID Mask Node </compositing/types/mask/id_mask>` in the Compositor.
 
 .. note::
 
-   :doc:`Volume Objects </modeling/volumes/introduction>` are not supported.
+   :doc:`Volume Objects </modeling/volumes/introduction>` dp not support the pass index.
 
 
 .. _bpy.types.Material.surface:
@@ -26,6 +30,7 @@ Surface
 
 Backface Culling
    Backface Culling hides the back side of faces.
+   This option should be turned on whenever it is possible, as it has an impact on performance.
 
    Camera
       Use back face culling to hide the back side of the face.
@@ -35,14 +40,52 @@ Backface Culling
 
    Light Probe Volume
       Use back face culling when baking light probe volumes.
+      Additionally helps rejecting capture point inside the object to avoid light leaking.
+
+   .. seealso::
+
+      :doc:`Light Probe Volume </render/eevee/light_probes/volume>`.
+
+
+.. _bpy.types.Material.displacement_method:
+
+Displacement Type
+   Controls how the displacement output from the shader node tree is used.
+
+   :Bump Only:
+      Use Bump Mapping to simulated the appearance of displacement.
+      This only modifies the shading normal of the object. Vertex position is not affected.
+
+   :Displacement Only:
+      This mode is not supported and fallback to *Displacement and Bump*.
+
+   :Displacement and Bump:
+      Combination of true displacement and bump mapping for finer details.
+      Vertex position is modified.
+
+   .. note::
+      This type of displacement is not precomputed. It has a performance impact multiplied by the
+      render sample count. However, the evaluation is much faster than doing it using geometry
+      nodes or a displacement modifier.
+
+.. _eevee-workaround-displacement:
+
+   .. note::
+      Displacing flat shaded geometry will split adjacent faces.
+      This can be worked around by passing the vertex normals as a custom attribute.
 
 Max Displacement
-   The maximum distance a vertex can be displaced. Displacements over this threshold may cause
-   visibility issues.
+   The maximum distance a vertex can be displaced when using true displacement.
+   Displacements over this threshold may cause visibility issues.
+   These visibility issues can be observed when the object is out of view at the edge of screen
+   with parts being displaced inside the view. The object would then disappear because of camera culling.
+   This can also produce missing shadow updates where the displaced geometry is.
+
+.. _bpy.types.Material.use_transparent_shadow:
 
 Transparent shadows
-   Use transparent shadows for this material if it contains a Transparent BSDF, Disabling will
-   render faster but not give accurate shadows.
+   Use transparent shadows for this material if it contains a Transparent BSDF.
+   Disabling will render faster but not give accurate shadows.
 
 .. _bpy.types.Material.render_method:
 
@@ -54,16 +97,83 @@ Render Method
       Also know as deferred rendering.
 
    :Blended:
-      Allows the colored transparency, but incompatible with render passes and raytracing. Also
-      known as forward rendering.
+      Allows the colored transparency, but incompatible with render passes and raytracing.
+      Also known as forward rendering.
+
+
+Dithered Layers
+---------------
+
+When using *Dithered* render method, the materials are rendered in layers.
+Each layer can only transmit (e.g. refract) light emitted from previous layers.
+If no intersection with the layers below exists, the transmissive BSDFs will fallback to light probes.
+
+Raytraced Transmission
+   Use raytracing to determine transmitted color instead of using only light probes.
+   This prevents the surface from contributing to the lighting of surfaces not using this setting.
+
+
+Sorting Problem
+---------------
+
+When using *Blended* render method, the order in which the color blending happens is important as it
+can change the final output color. As of now EEVEE does not support per-fragment (pixel) sorting or per-triangle sorting.
+Only per-object sorting is available and is automatically done on all transparent surfaces based on object origin.
+Opaque surfaces (i.e. that have no transparency) will still have correct sorting regardless of the render method.
+
+.. tip::
+   Face order can be adjusted in edit mode by using :doc:`sort element </modeling/meshes/editing/mesh/sort_elements>`.
+
+.. note::
+
+   Per-object sorting has a performance cost and having thousands of
+   these objects in a scene will greatly degrade performance.
+
+.. _bpy.types.Material.use_transparency_overlap:
 
 Transparency Overlap
-   Render multiple transparent layers. May introduce transparency sorting problems.
+   If enabled, all transparent fragments will be rendered.
+   If disabled, only the front-most surface fragments will be rendered.
+   This option can be disabled to fix sorting issues caused by blending order.
+   Only available for the *Blended* render method.
 
-Light Probe Volume
-   Single Sided
-      Consider materials single sided for light probe volume captures. Additionally helps rejecting
-      inside the object, to avoid light leaking.
+
+Thickness
+---------
+
+This feature is used to approximate the inner geometry structure of the object without heavy computation.
+This is currently used for Subsurface, Translucent BSDF, Refraction BSDF and the nodes containing them.
+
+If no value is plugged into the output node, then a default thickness based on the smallest dimension of the object is computed.
+If a value is connected it will be used as object space thickness (i.e. scaled by object transform).
+A value of zero will disable the thickness approximation and treat the object as having only one interface.
+
+.. note::
+   The thickness is used to skip the inner part of the object. This means that:
+   - refraction will skip objects inside this thickness distance.
+   - the surface will not receive shadow from casters within the thickness distance.
+
+.. tip::
+   - For large or compound meshes (e.g. vegetation), the thickness should be set to the thickness of individual parts (e.g. leaves, grass blades).
+   - Thickness can be baked to textures or custom attributes for more accurate result.
+
+Thickness Mode
+   Determines what model to use to approximate the object geometry.
+
+   :Sphere:
+      Approximate the object as a sphere whose diameter is equal to the thickness defined by the node tree.
+      This is more suited to objects with rounder edges (e.g. a monkey head), and is perfectly suited to spheres.
+
+   :Slab:
+      Approximate the object as an infinite slab of thickness defined by the node tree.
+      This is more suited to very flat or thin objects (e.g. glass panels, grass blades).
+
+From Shadow
+   Use the shadow maps from shadow casting lights to refine the thickness defined by the material node tree.
+   This takes the minimum thickness between the shadow map and the material node tree value.
+   This is useful for objects where pre-computation is difficult (e.g. complex meshes), impossible
+   (e.g. procedural geometry with displacement) or just impractical.
+   However, this will have a performance impact that scale with the number of render samples.
 
 
 .. _bpy.types.Material.volume:
@@ -75,16 +185,10 @@ Intersection
    Determines which inner part of the mesh will produce volumetric effect.
 
    :Fast:
-      Each gace is considered as a medium interface. Gives correct results for manifold geometry
+      Each face is considered as a medium interface. Gives correct results for manifold geometry
       that contains no inner part.
 
    :Accurate:
       Faces are considered as medium interface only when they have different consecutive facing.
       Gives correct results as long as the max ray depth is not exceeded. Has significant memory
       overhead compared to the fast method.
-
-
-.. seealso::
-
-   While EEVEE shares the same material node system as Cycles, not all features are supported.
-   See :ref:`Material limitations <eevee-limitations-materials>``.