Screen space GI for Eevee

The use of Eevee for architectural visualization can bring numerous benefits to 3D artists, and among them, we have render speeds as one of the most important. Since we use real-time renders, it is easy to create projects requiring only a couple of seconds to process a render. However, these incredible speeds come with a cost. The level of realism possible with Eevee doesn’t match Cycles, but you can get close.

Some of the features of Cycles are not available in Eevee or may require special objects like probes to process. For instance, you can only get global illumination with indirect light bounces with the aid of a probe.

If you like to use Eevee for your projects, an interest side project is under development and some nice improvements to Eevee. Meet the SSGI version of Eevee. The name is an acronym for Screen Space Global Illumination. The tool changes the way Eevee handles reflections and adds more options in the render panel.

The project started as an Add-on in the previous version, but it is now a custom build in Blender. You can find the builds with download links in this thread at the Blenderartists forums.

How does it work? Simple, you can set up a scene in Blender, and it will try to fake global illumination in your project. It is not the same as Cycles, but a great improvement over the probes. You can tweak the settings in your render panel using the Screen Space options. In most cases, using the default settings will already give some impressive results.

It is a custom build of Blender, like other optimized renderers such as E-Cycles.

Can we see something like that incorporated into Blender? According to the developer, it would be hard to submit the current code to the Blender team because he must organize and apply all standards required in the code for review. If that ever happens, it may take a while.

In the meantime, enjoy this custom build of Eevee. It is free.

By the way, I recently sent a video overview of this tool to all subscribers of Blender 3D Architect Pro.