What is the EV Express addon?

EV Express is an add-on that 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, see FAQ. 

How does EV Express speed up the workflow?

The core: Probably you know that when want to render quickly out your model, you need lights, background and floor, irradiance volume probe, and reflection probe.  For a quick job, there are too many settings to adjust. You need to line up the irradiance volume, change settings, change light settings, etc. Now with the EV Express, you can skip all that. Just click on one of the 32 thumbnails and it will place 11 lights in the scene, a backdrop, and probes.  The lights consist of two light rigs.  And the backdrop is the parent for the irradiance volume and the probes. Everything (render, light, probes) have already the best setting known. Additionally in the core of EV Express, a global shader is included, more about that later. 

But the EV Express addon offers even more. Take a look at the diagram below.

Next are the compositing nodes. This is a separate addon you get, that is included in the EV Express download. These are 9 useful node-groups you can use in the compositor. You don't need to append them. Instead, a press on a button will make these nodes available with Shift+A. Working with these node groups save you time because you don't need to arrange nodes one by one yourself. See it as building blocks. You can just plug them in. More explanation of the node-groups is in the documentation. 

Then, I implemented some looks in Color-management. As you know we don't have many looks in Color-management. Only low, high, medium-high, very high contrast, etc.  So we have now 8 more looks.  See the last update on how you get this to work. 

Features: 

• Add two light rigs with the best settings known so far for shadow, contact shadow, etc.
• All lights are adjustable in the EV Express (color, size). 
• 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 volumetrics.  Ready to render, so no hassle to set up material (or find the material) but just press two buttons.  Adjust the color of volume.
• Add keying-set for all the settings for one of the light-rigs.  This means that you can key-frame the rig and with that, you key-frame its colors, position, scale, and focus.  Normally you have to key-frame each color for each light for example. now you can do it with one click.   
• Settings related to the camera 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 the 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 color scheme. With one button-click you can change the color scheme.  I stole these color combinations from movies.  
• Add nine useful Node-groups in the compositor.  There are common ones like vignette but also some unique node-groups like Logo-overlay and Normal-FX.
• Eight looks in Color Management.  
• Thirty-two big thumbnails. When clicking on one of them it will place lights, probes, smoke (if it's included in the preset), and backdrop.  

Looking for more? - EEVEE Production Suite

The EEVEE Production Suite is EV Express its big brother; A reliable EEVEE environment that makes you ready to produce media for the internet, concept design, and professional previews. It's a complete production package for EEVEE that includes also a library of 165 procedural materials, 46 node groups to build your own material, and more. Check out the EEVEE Production Suite on Blender Market. 

The story of the EV Express addon  

It started with EEVEE, our real-time render engine in Blender. We were all happy to have this real-time render engine, but the community struggled to get things right. Many had and still have problems with light leaks, and not having the knowledge on how to work with probes, etc. One important thing is that HDRI doesn't cast shadows! Still, up to now, I notice that many don't realize this. Because we can't use HDRI's (when baking) in EEVEE, we need to use lights. And there we had loads of questions (and still) about how to use the light settings, how to use settings for the probes and how to place them. 

Now, while EEVEE is a real-time engine, it is a big hassle to set up your lights and probes. Therefore I decided to make my life easier because I knew I would make a lot of use of the EEVEE render engine in the future. Even with my three GTX 1080 TI video cards, I prefer to get the best out of the EEVEE engine, because it is as good as noise-free and you the real-time feedback you get with EEVEE makes it more productive.  So EV Express started as an addon with 1 simple light rig and probes parented to a backdrop. 

And from there the EV Express grew out to be more than just an addon. For example, I wanted presets for colors of the light. And so I picked values from HDRI's and made presets for the lights of them. Then someone wanted a classic three-point light rig.  I tried it out and found that this is the ultimate solution. We had one big light rig, more for ambient light, and a three-point light to make more definition. 

Later, I noticed that I found it a hassle to find the camera settings all the time, so I implemented some camera settings like lock, unlock to view, DOF with one click.  Then I started to bother about the bake button and render settings because those kinds of settings are often all over the place. 

So far, we didn't have the thumbnails, no presets for complete different setups, and I wanted to have that feature for a long time. But the coding of those big previews drove me nuts.  And so recently I decided to hire a developer (Ben Morisson), who wrote the thumbnails part. Those thumbnails are like having 32 scenes, with the difference that you keep your models in the scene, and all the rest will change: lights, backdrop, probes, smoke. It works quite like magic: you can save your scene and if you decide you want to have another look, just click on a thumbnail (and adjust a bit if need). So it doesn't matter much to care about lights, just do your modeling and save time not bothering about probes, lights, etc. 

And the very last update: we have now more looks in color management.  

Contact

• You see on the right of this page (if you are logged in): "Ask a Question." After a click, you will see a short form, and I will get a notification. Usually, I will reply within 9 hours unless I am on holiday. 
• You can also join our Discord Server.  There you can ask questions, see all updates, and you can submit your art. 
• Or you can contact us at Twitter: @newmediasupply or @cgonfire (for technical questions).

Roadmap: 

• Templates for the Logo Overlay Node-groups
• Export Light-groups (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.  
• The correct name of the 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 easier to control the rig with the empties.  

Update 12_04_2019: 

Quite a huge update this week:

•  Added common settings related to the camera. 
• Merged the addon Global Shader into this addon EV Express.  See the documentation (and video later) of what you can do with the Global Shader.  
• Divided the menu with collapsible panels. This is to make it better readable and settings you don't need for the moment you can collapse.  
• The backdrops come now with probes, and the probes are parented to them.  
• A selection button to select both parents of the rig.  This is convenient for 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 drop-down menu for the presets of the global shader so it takes less space.
• There is now a menu for color 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 was to prevent the bug to happen. Smoke/Fog is working again.  Meanwhile, the bug in Blender is now solved as well.
• Added more color combinations, mainly based on Movies from Tim Burton and one color combination from the movie Geisha.

Update April 26, 2019: 

• Added a 3 Point Light Rig 
• Added control for the smoke
• Added settings for Color Management
• Made menu's dynamic.
• Added extensive documentation in-app. Meaning there is a button in the addon that opens documentation in the browser.  

Update May 3, 2019

• Added node-groups for the compositor
• Bugfix

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 too harsh. Then I found out: the stronger the lights are, you tend to place them further away. This makes the lights look harsh (search for fall of). So I reduced the strength of the lights and also gave them a bit of soft shadow.  Overall the lights look better and it improves user experience. 
  
• Tip: For the 3point Control, use the color picker instead of the Energy property. This works much faster. In the color picker, 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 node-groups to the compositor. (The is the AO-mix node that uses the AO-pass and the Normal-FX nodes use the Normal pass).  

Update may 29, 2019,

• Tweaks to have a softer shadow.
• Added a panel so we can control also the 8 lights of the spotrig separately; select, color, strength, size.
• Reorganization of the addon files. The Visual Studio Code is now used for further development of the addon.  

Update July 05, 2019, 

• Softer shadows thanks to research by Blender Guru. 
• A set of Blend-files with thumbnails which are complete setups. You can load these in your favorite asset manager. This way you don't have to set up lighting all over again.

Update October 18, 2019, 

compatibility with Blender 2.81.
  - Render settings (changes in shadow algorithm)
  - Lights and Additional lights (changes in shadow algorithm) 

improved:
- Render-settings to reduce light leaks.  

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 the 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 05, 2019,

- Finally hired a developer who implemented a new feature: Big Thumbnails. So it means that there are 32 presets of complete light-setups including backdrop, spotlight, 3 point light, materials, smoke.  All you have to do now is choose a preset and tweak it with EV Express. 

Update December 12, 2019,

- Suprise Suprise!  I created some looks under color management with help from Troy.  To get it to work you need to download the config.ocio and replace it in your Blender installation. For example: C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\blender-2.81a-windows64\blender-2.81a-windows64\2.81\datafiles\colormanagement  First rename the original config.ocio to config_old.txt and move it somewhere as backup. 

- Also tweaked some backdrops, making them more generic. 

- And used a woman's bust from CGCookie for the thumbnails. The thumbnails look much better. 

With every update, I send out an e-mail. In case you didn't receive any e-mail let me know.  

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 a 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.  

Update August 13, 2020:

- EV Express is now compatible with Blender 2.9

- Changed the shape of the first 3 backdrops. 

Update October 21, 2020:

- Added new nodes for the compositor: Pivoted Contrast, Hold Out Mixer, and improved Saturation/Desaturation.  See also a video on: https://youtu.be/qIY1OPB2I7A 

Update July 16, 2021:

• Render settings to 32 samples. Default is 256, but I don't see any difference. So that is a huge speedup. 
• Adapted to the new DOF features which are now enabled by default.
• Volumetric lighting and shadows are enabled by default. 
• Use High-Quality Normals by default
• There were backdrops not at Z=0. That is fixed now. 
• Preset 10 has a new backdrop. And some other adjustments.

Update July 17, 2021: 

Added a few nodes in the compos nodes addon that is also included:

• Mist is to add mist. It’s more convenient to control the distance and strength of mist. You need to turn on the Mist pass in the Properties Panel > View layer properties.
• Pivoted contrast is to have step-less contrast instead of what we have now in color management. Leave Pivot on 0.18. which is mid-grey (unless you know why you want to change it).
• Cryptomatte is just a three-layer thingy. Often you have a background, foreground, and things in between that you want to adjust. Inside the node group, you can adjust each layer queue HSV. But you can add your nodes in need.
• PP_Effect Channel Saturation. Meant to be a quick way to only add saturation on RGB channels separately. The effect is mild and seems to take quite some CPU power. PP stands for Pixel Push and with that I mean it’s only suitable for when you publish your render straight out of Blender.
• PP-Effect-Warm-Cold is a nice effect that doesn’t take too much CPU power. It’s a pixel push effect, a bit Instagram-ish.

Update July 18, 2021

I added the following awesome presets:

• The EV Express is switching over to a system with adjustable backdrops. The above presets are prepared for that.
• The above scenes have a new light; the Stripe Light. This gives you powerful control lighting the scene even more. 
• If you load one of the new scenes you will see in the UI the following: 

To adjust the strength of the Stripe light, the best is to change the color. That is much faster. When you click 'Select Controler', you select the parent of the 3 stripes so you can easily loc-rot-scale the light. 

Working with the Stripe light goes fast; Just change the color, and click the controller to change position. 

Update 19 July 2021

We're now at EV Express 10.3.4. 

I did the following fixes:

• Cleaned up orphan data. The file size is now 164MB instead of 456MB. 
• Placed the latest light presets on top
• The High-Key preset was missing and is included now. 
• Fixed an issue with the StripeLight collection when loading another preset.

Update August 3, 2021

• EV Express 10.3.6
• Improvement of shadows and contact shadows of the additional lights
• More links in the documentation panel of the EV Express (Tutorials, Twitter, Discord).
• Changed info in the preferences (Authors, links, version).

Update February 11, 2022

• Bugfix for Blender 3.0 and higher. The buttons render 1, 2 and 3 caused an error and didn't adjust the render settings. This problem is now fixed and everything else seem to work as intended. 

Update March 22, 2022

• EV Express is now compatible with Blender 3.1. EV Express version 10.4.6

Update 13 May 2022

• For performance sake, I simplified the complex materials for the latest 16 backdrops. Especially users with a Mac (M1) and with a slow CPU will notice the difference. This is because shader compiling works on the CPU. 
• Added a passe-partout control for the camera in the UI. 
  
• Added a menu to control the shape of the backdrops. (the first 16 backdrops you see in the thumbnails, are the latest additions). 
  

Update 22 May 2022

• Bug fix:  there was an error spawning in the system console about a NoneType has no attribute name. Fixed.
• Added gamma in the color management tab. 
• Added resolution in the render settings tab.