I have been a citizen here at cookie for over three years and almost all (if not all) of the educational content created by the cookie staff tends to promote Cycles render engine as being to go-to for all things render; I recently downloaded Blender v2.8b (and I am in love) and noticed that the default render engine is a new engine (to me) called Eevee that I have no experience with, and so I wanted to open a discussion about what this change means for users like myself who have been using cycles for several years. Obviously, long-time users of Cycles have the option of continued use of the engine, but I am hoping some of you can help demystify the pros and cons between Eevee and Cycles so that I can better understand use-case scenarios for them both!
I was also hoping to find out whether anybody knows if the educational content provided by the cookie staff will shift to promoting Eevee when Blender 2.8 becomes the new standard as I have already heard that some of the learning flows such as "Introduction to Blender" will receive an update the same day that Blender 2.8 is released.
Derek
@dbchesties here a few links for info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OcsISVcQYk (Eevee Q&A! - Blender Developers Live Stream)
https://cgcookie.com/articles/get-ready-for-eevee-blender-s-new-real-time-rendering-engine
https://cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/blender-2-8-tutorial-overview-eevee-more/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xfh_vTPZrk
https://sinestesia.co/blog/tutorials/eveee-crash-course/
Just a few of the ones I've used for info. Do a search for comparisons of cycles and eevee.
Eevee is a great tool for real-time rendering, but at the cost of less accuracy. Cycles will still give you the most accurate render if that's what you want. From what I understand, Eevee is providing a more 1:1 modeling software to game engine accuracy, so if you want to make games, whatever you see in Eevee should translate relatively easily to a game engine. Materials between Cycles and Eevee should be relatively similar/easy to fix, but Eevee does have its own switches to flip on where it's default in Cycles.
There was also a past workshop focusing exclusively on Eevee, so you can watch the livestream and see the differences that way, too.
@charmn-one I didn't notice that there was nomenclature for Eevee right there on Blender's website! The official documentation turned out to be the best source of information (as it usually does), so thanks for pointing me in the right direction, and I have to admit that I am pretty excited about the new Eevee engine!
silentheart00 according to the documentation you nailed right on the head. apparently Eevee is a realtime rendering engine which approximates PBR, which is essentially what most game engines incorporate, so it makes perfect sense that using Eevee will give you very accurate results in the sense of what to expect when you see your assets inside of a game engine.
Thank you both for chiming in!