Description
Due to the size of the EV Express addon, the user experience on Blender Market and Gumroad is more convenient. File Size on Blender-addons is limited to 128Mb by webhosting provider and the EV Express addon exceeds this file-size.
The EV Express addon for Blender 2.8x speeds up tremendously the workflow setting up a scene in EEVEE to showcase your model. No more hassle adjust all the render settings, shadows, contact shadows, probes, etc. Per april 15 you can use the EV Express add-on also for Cycles.
You ever were in the situation that you quickly wanted to setup a scene but at the end it took a bit longer because you were looking for settings somewhere hidden? Not with EV Express. Now you can be really productive in case you need a scene to showcase your model. This Video will give you a quick overview.
Features:
- Add two light rigs with best settings known so far for shadow, contact shadow, etc.
- Colour presets for lights inspired by HDRI’s from Greg Zaal. Of course it’s not possible to simulate HDRI’s with lights in EEVEE but it is pretty handy to have some presets that are recognizable.
- Add backdrops to the scene. For now, there are four kinds of backdrops.
- Add volumetrics. Ready to render, so no hassle to set up material (or find the material) but just press two buttons. Adjust color of volume.
- Add keyingset for all the settings for one of the light-rigs. This means that you can keyframe the rig and with that, you keyframe it’s colors, position, scale, and focus. Normally you have to keyframe each color for each light for example. now you can do it with one click.
- Settings related to camera which are normally spread out across several places like Lock to View, DOF, Focal Length, and with one button you place an empty for the Depth of Field. The depth of field with be automagically enabled. How convenient! I love it.
- The global shader is now included (per 12 april update). This was a separate addon but I merged it in the EV Express addon. See the global shader as a shader for the whole scene but has a colour scheme. With one button-click you can change the colour-scheme. I stole these colour combinations from movies.
- Add nine useful Nodegroups in the compositor. There are common ones like vignette but also some unique nodegroups like Logo-overlay and Normal-FX.
Roadmap:
- Per May 5, the EV EXpress addon for Blender 2.8 will be out of pre-release. There will be price-increase. Before May 5, I hope to receive enough feedback and suggestions to improve the addon further.
- More backdrops.
- Templates for the Logo Overlay Nodegroups
- Export Lightgroups (renders) so you can import the renders as layers in GIMP for example.
Update 05_04_2019:
- Improved UI, starting with options to add items to the scene to ensure a better workflow.
- Correct name of addon in the preferences and in the N-Panel’s tab.
- Fixed an issue that a backdrop showed up invisible.
- The cube to bake indirect light is now hidden to it’s eassier to control the rig with the empties.
Update 12_04_2019:
Quite a huge update this week:
- Added common settings related to camera.
- Merged the addon Global Shader into this addon EV Express. See documentation (and video later) what you can do with the Global Shader.
- Divided the menu with collapsible panels. This to make it better readable and settings you don’t need for the moment you can collapse.
- The backdrops comes now with probes, and the probes are parented to it.
- A selection button to select both parents of the rig. This is convenient manipulating the rig. Try R and R again.
- Fix: Scaling and rotation of the two empties were not included in the keying set.
Update 18 April 2019:
- Fixed issue with making the global shader active. (it was only selected, not active)
Now you just have to click the button: Select GS. and then go to the customer properties in the properties panel (tab object) to adjust the material. - Made a dropdown menu for the presets of the global shader so it takes less space.
- There is now a menu for colour combinations and a menu to choose shaders. So I added shader presets.
- EV-Express goes TURBO. This is a blend-file where you just have to model and use the Global Shader. Set output file, render and see 100 variations. Pick the nice ones, and sent those to your client (for example).
- There was a bug in Blender, and removed the text inside the principled volume to prevent the bug to happen. Smoke/Fog is working again. Meanwhile the bug in Blender is now solved as well.
- Added more colour combinations, mainly based on Movies from Tim Burton and one colour combination from the movie Geisha.
Update April 26, 2019:
- Added a 3 Point Light Rig
- Control for the smoke
- Settings for Color Management
- Made menu’s dynamic.
- Added extensive documentation in-app. Meaning there is a button in the in the addon that opens documentation in the browser.
Update May 3, 2019
- Added nodegroups for the compositor
- Bug fix
Update May 15, 2019
- In the latest build of Blender, lights settings have been unified more between Cycles and EEVEE. Therefore EV Express had an update to adapt to these changes
Update May 17, 2019
- After the update two days ago, I found the lights to harsh. Then I found out: the stronger the lights are, you tend to place them further away. This make the lights look harsh (search for fall of). So I reduced the strength of lights and also gave them a bit soft shadow. Overall the lights looks better and it improves user-experience.
- Tip: For the 3point Control, use the colorpicker instead of the Energy property. This works much faster. In the colorpicker, to change the strength of light use the vertical slider on the right.
Update may 18, 2019
Due to changes in Blender’s API on May 18, many functions broke related to:
- Additional lights
- Smoke
- Render Settings
- Camera Settings
These have been fixed. Also when using one of the Render Settings buttons, the AO-pass and the Normal-pass will be enabled. This is handy for when you add the nodegroups to the compositor. (The is the AO-mix node that uses the AO-pass and the Normal-FX nodes uses the Normal pass).
Update may 29, 2019,
- Tweaks to have softer shadow.
- Added a panel so we can control also the 8 lights of the spotrig seperately; select, color, strength, size.
- Reorganisation of the addon files. The Visual Studio Code is now used for further development of the addon.
Update October 18, 2019,
compatibility with Blender 2.81.
– Render settings (changes in shadow algorithm)
– Lights and Additional lights (changes in shadow algorithm)
improved:
– Rendersettings to reduce lightleaks.
Added:
– Transform View. Use this to calibrate your scene with False Color, especially if you are going to make a startup scene/file. See tips below.
– Select All button to select all the lights in the SpotRig. If we now press Alt and then change the Energy of 1 light, we do this for all the lights at the same time.
Update December 2019
Big thumbnails, 32 presets for complete setups. I wanted this feature for a long time and finally decided to hire a developer for it. Thanks to Ben Morrison we have now big thumbnails to import light setups.
Update January 15, 2020:
– EV Express goes Archviz. This means I added 8 presets with buildings. And for each building lights, probes and materials are set up.
– A render preset that has Lower light threshold. This means that weaker lights can contribute to lighting the scene. I added a bit more ambient occlusion in this preset.
– Made it to work with Blender 2.82.
Here a video that shows what your workflow could be:
