hi, my name is Tim, I'm doing the "Blender Core Skills: The Ultimate Blender Basics Bundle" and need major help with the materials class. For some reason I can't get my Blender app to function like his when in rendered preview or material preview. Please somebody tell me what i'm doing wrong. Iv'e included screenshots with some added text to show what oi mean exactly. I tried messing with denoiser and all kinds of stuff and just can't get it to behave anything like the teachers. i am using Blender 4.2.1. any help will be greatly appreciated because right now my heart is in my stomach and I really want to learn.
Hello Tim. I guess to try and put your mind at ease a little bit, in the fundamentals you're getting introductions to notions and conceptualizations, you don't really need to worry yet about getting exactly the same look as what's on screen, usually there's a bunch of things that goes on before a teacher hits record and right now they aren't focusing on result/ goal oriented outcomes, otherwise they would explain every little thing. Right now the important thing is the knowledge, that you get to know the concepts and you can play around yourself in Blender. So in the meantime, you can relax the expectation of a goal oriented training, that comes in other courses where you're aiming for an outcome.
In this case what you're describing it's probably that you have the denoise on, you can see it on your screenshot, the Denoise checkboxes are on for both the viewport and the render. You can disable those.
Agree with Omar to the point with the denoiser. The denoiser only affects cycles, that's what your render settings are set to. However the material preview uses Eevee - which leads to the likely problem here:
You are using 4.2.1 while the course was recorded in 2.83.0 (see bottom right corner)
Eevee has gotten a major overhaul for version 4.2 where many settings have changed and the way eevee interacts with lighting and all. That's likely the reason why yours looks so different. Best recommendation is to download Blender 2.83 and use that to follow along. https://download.blender.org/release/
Then once you've grasped the basics you can go back to 4.2 and try to adapt your knowledge to the new version.
Hey Tim!
Sascha is absolutely right, and using the same Blender version that is being used in the tutorials is something that will get recommended a lot when trying to trouble shoot things.
It took me a while to get around that fact, but once I gave it a go I found following along to be much more streamlined - Sure, it does seem somewhat counterintuitive to use an older version, but while you're learning the concepts and how things work it really is a great idea to use them! Especially as a number of functions are either called different things or are located elsewhere within the UI - I remember having a hard time trying to find certain things that had been changed while I was using a newer version compared to the ones used in the tutorials.
And as Sascha says, once you've grasped the basics, go back to the current version of 4.2 and you'll find everything has been updated and easier to use and navigate - That's why we all get excited when new versions come out!
like trying to get the same "clearcoat" settings for the handheld console prpoject on cgcookie. i figured it out. but it was almost impossible without others to guide me. I kind of knew all that stuff. i just find it wierd. i'm not trying to get it exact, like the same color etc. I was just worried about the strange performance and worse visuals then the older versions. Thanks for your input. I was more hoping for an answer for what to do so that i get similar results in EVEE but i guess evee is stuck now with a horribly ugly super pixelated look in material preview mode. I already read all about EVEE renderers changes etc. Thanks anyways everyone. I want to learn 4.2 or at least 4.1. I don't do anything behind version 3 for sure. I can guarantee alot of that info will just go to waste and i'll be stuck digging through manuals and guides to try to figure out how to do these things in my version. which btw, doesn't seem to have much of that info offered online yet. at least i cant seem to find it. you all answered very quickly. thank you. This is a great community.
Hi Tim BBrowneyebill ,
Maybe you need to update your GPU driver; I don't think EEVEE should be that Pixelated and it definitely shouldn't change when moving around.
This is what I get in Material Preview in 4.2.1:
And maybe check the requirements: https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/
Yes, you can post a screenshot or video of your screen so we can see what you mean. Perhaps what you refer as pixelated is actually just noise from the render. But there's most certainly nothing wrong going on, most likely it's just that you have encountered new concepts and you're just not used to them.
The Plot Thickens!!!! I tried a brand new file and loaded in a suzanne monkey with some subdivision surface modifiers and smooth shading with a basic shader. and i also appended in the "ArkBasicShader"(a shader meant for "Ark Survival Evolved" and "Atlas" 3D assets) and through in a skeleton from ark and applied his textures. It actually works like it's supposed to!!! I'm not sure what's up with the course source file i used or if It was something i did to the file that i didnt realize mabe. not one bit of noise or pixelation! although i havent tried running cycles renderer yet with this file. What do you alll think!?
The shaders have changed a bit too since 2.83 but since that is the version the course file was saved in and you say a newly created file works just fine, the problem is most likely that something in the course file is linked to a setting that has been overhauled since. In that case there shouldn't be anything wrong with your system, seems powerful enough.
Blender files are usually backwards compatible to a certain extend, but the changes between 2.83 and 4.2 are quite significant. I just opened said file in my 4.2.1 and get the same noise and it looks totally funky. So rest assured it's the file compatibility, not your system.
Edit: Just opened the same file with 3.6 and 4.1.1 and it works totally as intended, no noise.
Hey guys,
I tested that file in 4.2.1 and it works fine (the same as in 4.0 for instance). Maybe it helps if you change the Viewport Pixel Size from Automatic to 1x:
Although I don't think that's the problem.
We have seen discrepancies between Blender Versions before that 'worked inconsistently' on different systems (so far unsolved).
You might also try Downloading Blender from Blender.org, instead of through Steam...
It gets even wierder everyone. I attempted once again to open that file in blender 4.2.1 and no noise. here's the result i got 
so now i'm very stumped. I can't seem to get it to do the pixelated thing anymore(which is good of course). Either way, I love Blender and I love CGCookie.com and it's community! Thanks everyone for your time.
a wierd thing happens though when I go to cycles with the source files for the course. in evee it looks normal. in cycles it turns whitelike this lol. anyone have any idea what that's about?
